


Picking Up The Shield

by SaffronDragon



Category: Torg: Eternity
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Conversion therapy mention, Cyberpunk, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Origin Story, Police Brutality, Pre-Canon, Reality Bending, Religious Fanaticism, Resistance, Theocracy, Trans Female Character, Transformation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24362254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaffronDragon/pseuds/SaffronDragon
Summary: Chloe Beech expected that her problems were going to involve going to school in a different country, dealing with being a closeted trans girl, or maybe having trouble making her way to classes. What she didn't expect was that her problems would involve France getting invaded by an evil, twisted version of the Catholic Church, reality itself falling apart, and being forced to turn from an ordinary college student into something more. Assuming she makes it out alive, of course.
Kudos: 5





	1. Doubt

Chapter 1: Doubt

Chloe Beech had three problems. One was immediate, one was looming over her life, and one was less than twelve hours away from crashing into her life like a bus to the face. The immediate one was that she had a club meeting to get to.  
  
“Have either of you seen my phone?” she asked, fumbling around under her bed.  
  
Mitchell, a tall and skinny blonde kid with a poor attempt at a goatee festooning his face, was in the corner nonchalantly eating cereal. “What is this, the fifth time you’ve lost your phone?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter, it’s really small and easy to lose, alright? Maybe next time I should get the blue case or something…” Chloe gave up on looking under her bed. Maybe it had been buried under the papers at her desk?  
  
“You’re just going to… what was it again?” Mitchell asked.  
  
“Creative writing club,” Chloe told him. It was a lie.  
  
“Right, you’re just going to creative writing club. Why do you need your phone anyway?”  
  
Chloe rolled her eyes where she thought Mitchell wouldn’t see her. “If I could just beam my thoughts to you, then maybe I could leave it behind. Now could you please help me with this?”  
  
“Sorry, can’t. Weekend fencing practice and all that.” Mitchell ran a hand through his spiky hair and slung a gym bag over his shoulder. “Maybe I can help you after lunch.” He shrugged, and then left.  
  
It was days like these when Chloe wondered why she had been friends with Mitchell since the start of high school. “Jules, have you noticed any cell phones out of place?”  
Jules apparently didn’t have anything to do this Sunday, and so would normally not be awake until around noon. He jerked awake, scratching at his scalp through buzz-cut hair and grunting with discomfort. “Hein?”  
  
Chloe switched to French. “My cell is missing, do you know where it is?” She turned around to look at him.  
  
Jules was a stocky teenager, fat and muscle that had proven invaluable on moving-in day. He was pale, the kind of pale that will never get less pale because it turns red in the sun instead of tanning. There was more roundness to his face than Mitchell’s or Chloe’s, making him look young for an eighteen-year-old. About a second later, the words from Chloe’s mouth reached his sleep-deprived brain, and he started clicking, a rhythmic sound like a metronome.  
  
“You realize I’m not the best person to ask for finding lost things, no?” Jules said, smirking. It was a winning smile, the kind that brightened his whole face. Chloe glanced up at his eyes, a uniform shade of milky yellow-white.  
  
“I know, I hoped that… Never mind, I’ll keep looking.” She had known that Jules’s echolocation wasn’t high enough resolution for things like that, but there was always hope.  
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t know where your cell is.” Jules swung his legs out over the side of the bed. “I could call it for you, if you want?”  
  
Chloe shook her head. “It was on silent, that won’t help.”  
  
Jules sighed. “That’s a shame. I really wish I could—“  
  
Chloe lifted up a spiral notebook full of circuit diagrams and found her cell phone, plain as day. She swore repeatedly, jamming her phone into her pocket. “Okay I’m going to be late so I have to go now, see you later!”  
  
Chloe threw her satchel over her shoulder. Then, remembering at the last second, she picked up the unmarked plastic disk full of pills sitting on her desk and popped two of the pills under her tongue.  
  
“Have fun, Casey,” said Jules.  
  
That was the second problem. At some point, Chloe knew she was going to have to come out to her dormmates as trans. It was why she lied about where she was going, as well. It was a group called The Pride, a place where people from every part of the rainbow could meet up to talk about their lives. Being as it was one of the very very few places she had a chance to really be herself, she didn’t want to miss any of it.  
  
Bag over her shoulder and estrogen dissolving under her tongue, Chloe rushed out into the Paris-Saclay campus. Paris-Saclay was an enormous school, less than a decade old and dripping with the clean-white chrome and glass aesthetic of the 21st century.  
  
Chloe hurried as best as she could to the spare classroom on the edge of campus that The Pride had rented out. Just as she was rounding a corner, however, she ran face-first into someone. She wasn’t paying much attention to where she was going, and nearly stumbled over.“Oh, sorry. Are you okay?”  
  
Chloe got a good look at the man during the awkward moment; he was small and skinny, looking like he hadn’t been eating well. His clothes were ragged and torn, patchworks browns and grey that let him blend in with the surrounding concrete. His face was long and thin with a scraggly black beard and leathery skin. A pair of glasses with small, nearly opaque lenses covered his eyes.  
  
For a moment he was silent, barely seeming to have noticed the person who ran into him. Then he grabbed Chloe by the shoulders and began speaking in French, too rapidly to understand.  
  
“What? What’s happening? Could you slow down?” she asked, getting worried.  
  
“The day of demons is upon us, all faith and love and purity and blood and skin will fail us so only the steel remains. Storms will wrack the earth and draw blood from the soil and turn flesh against…” He rambled on and on in a stream of apocalyptic gibberish, entire body locked and tense.  
  
“Please let go of me, I don’t want to make any trouble,” Chloe sputtered.  
  
“The prophets are screaming at us and their tears will drown the earth for there are none without sin left to safeguard us no gods no heroes no light no…”  
“Let go of me!” she growled, letting her voice drop even lower than it normally was. When he didn’t respond, she shoved him back, forcing him to let go of his grip.  
Chloe had taken a few self-defense classes, and raised her arms in preparation for this clearly disturbed man to get violent. He stood there, hunched over, barely moving. Nothing happened, and eventually he seemed to forget that Chloe was there at all.  
  
A sudden wave of shame washed over Chloe. She had nearly been ready to fight this man, who was just… harmlessly ill. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, before dashing off to her club meeting.  
  
The Pride’s room was normally an architecture classroom on weekdays, meaning that the rainbow decor had to be kept to a minimum. Even still, Chloe could tell she was in the right place by the artfully-drawn poster of a rainbow-colored lion taped to the door. Chloe slipped a small pin out of her pocket, and flipped it over in her hand a couple of times, before pinning it to her shirt. It was a simple circle pin, decorated with the blue-pink-white-pink-blue stripes of the trans flag. Considering her deep voice, flat chest, round figure, short hair, and stubble, the pin was about the only way anyone would know she wasn’t just some guy. And even then they didn’t always get it right.  
She pushed open the door to see the meeting already underway. There were drinks and snacks all around, people of every gender talking about whatever was going on. Chloe scanned the crowd for one person in particular.  
  
“Hey Safiya, sorry I’m late!” Chloe raised her voice over the general clamor of conversation, pushing past a few people to get to her.  
  
“Oh, Chloe! I was wondering where you were, you never miss these.” Safiya smiled, her hazel eyes glinting as they noticed Chloe’s presence.  
  
“I had a really crazy morning,” Chloe chuckled. “I couldn’t find my phone, then I ran into this weird guy… Oh, Safiya, you have a thing…” She gestured to her hairline.  
Safiya reached up, and tucked the stray lock of hair back behind her headscarf. “Thanks. Wait, weird guy… Do you mean the blind prophets?”  
  
Chloe shrugged. “He was blind and he was spewing some kind of prophecy. You could call him a blind prophet I suppose.”  
  
Safiya gave Chloe a weird look, saying, “You haven’t been paying attention to the news, have you? Those blind prophets are all over the country, they’ve been appearing for weeks.”  
  
“Oh, wow,” said Chloe. “I don’t really pay attention to the news at all. Too depressing.”  
  
“So then you don’t know about what’s happening in the United States?”  
  
Chloe saw the forlorn look on Safiya’s face and got immediately worried. “No, what is it?”  
  
Safiya pulled out her phone and tapped a few times. She handed it to Chloe. On the screen was a news article headline, reading: “Electromagnetic Storm Encompasses American Northeast”. The main picture under the headline was a diagram, a map of New England with a big reddish blob placed over it, the kind of thing normally reserved for wildfires or floods. The article itself didn’t have much else to say. Yesterday evening, late morning local time, some kind of storm had appeared and covered the entire area. All communications were shut off, and satellite imagery showed that the region had lost all power.  
  
“Holy shit. It’s like a hurricane, but… without any warning.”  
  
Safiya nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t read it since yesterday. Have they figured out what it is yet?”  
  
Chloe skimmed through the article one more time. “No. They have a few quotes from experts about ‘solar flares’ and stuff, but even with the editing it’s clear they don’t know much of anything. Sorry.”  
  
“That’s just what I expected,” Safiya said bitterly. She closed her eyes, holding back tears. A hand grabbed her shoulder, seeming to lighten her mood somehow.  
  
“It’s okay baby. It’s only been a day. I know that things are going to get better.” That was Robin, Safiya’s partner. They were short and small, with ear-length red hair and a wiry build.  
  
“Thanks baby,” said Safiya, grabbing Robin’s hand. She looked back to Chloe, adding, “I have family in the area. Haven’t heard from them since the storm hit.”  
  
“I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Chloe knew that Safiya had a tendency towards catastrophizing, and ever since they had become friends at the beginning of the year, she had often been the voice of reason for her.  
  
“You’re probably right. Anyway, let’s not talk about that, it’s too depressing. How are your dormmates, Chloe?”  
  
“I don’t know. Jules is still a nice guy, but we don’t spend much time together. Mitchell has been a real asshole to me lately, and I don’t know why.”  
  
“At least you have one person who supports you…” Safiya stopped, frowning. “Have you come out to either of them yet?”  
  
Chloe shook her head. “No. Maybe I should, but I’ve known Mitchell for so long I don’t know if he could handle something that big.”  
  
“What about Jules?” asked Robin. “You said he’s nice and all that. Do you think he’d be accepting?”  
  
Chloe shook her head instinctively. “I don’t… I mean, he’s… You know, you might be right. I think I could come out to him, or try, at least.”  
  
“I don’t want to pressure you or anything,” said Robin, “but I’ve found that the more people know who you really are, the better. I forget, you’re already on hormones, aren’t you?”  
  
Chloe nodded. “Which means I’m going to have to come out to people eventually.”  
  
“So why not start with someone who’s been good to you,” Safiya butted in. “Hell, if it works out, he might be able to help you with Mitchell and other people.”  
  
“Okay, thanks,” said Chloe. “I might try coming out to him later today. I’ll be sure to text you how it went.”  
  
Chloe and Safiya continued talking about all sorts of things for another hour and a half, even after the meeting wound down and it was just the two of them in the hallway. Eventually, they ran out of things to talk about and Chloe realized that she still had something to get done. As she walked back to her dorm, she found herself meandering to take in the sights and think. She knew it was better to just get it over with; either it would go well and she would have a new ally, or it would go poorly and she would have Safiya’s shoulder to cry on.  
  
By the time Chloe had made it back to her dorm, the sun was well overhead, blasting away the cloud cover and heating the air to a balmy twenty degrees. The closer she got to her dorm room, and the closer she got to Jules, the more nervous Chloe became, her stomach tingling with anxiety.  
  
Jules hadn’t left the dorm room since that morning, or at least it didn’t look as if he had. He was on his phone, talking animatedly with someone. Chloe stood around awkwardly, waiting for him to stop. Chloe pulled out her own phone to pass the time, checking social media and trying not to listen in. Eventually the conversation trailed off and a weird silence fell over the dorm room.  
  
Jules clicked a few times, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t alone. “Who is it?”  
  
“Oh, it’s me,” said Chloe, thankful he couldn’t see the sweat drops forming on her forehead. “Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt your phone call.”  
  
“Oh no it’s all fine,” said Jules, waving it off. “So how are things?”  
  
“Ummm… There’s something I wanted to talk to you about. It’s kinda important, but…” Not only was Chloe sweating, but now she was almost certain that she was blushing wildly. “What were you talking about, if you don’t mind me asking?”  
  
“One of my friends from high school, a guy named Sam. I was just catching up with him, I guess you could say,” Jules said, shrugging.  
  
Chloe leaned against her desk, trying to act casual and push down the rapidly-escalating anxiety. “Oh, has anything interesting happened? Or just normal stuff.”  
  
“He has a new girlfriend, actually. He got together with one of those…transgenders? I didn’t know he was into that sort of thing, really.“  
  
“I don’t give a shit,” Chloe mumbled, holding back tears. “I have to go, go do some things.”  
  
“Didn’t you have something important you wanted to tell me?”  
  
“I’ll tell you later.” And then the door slammed behind Chloe and she was out. She had trusted him. She had thought that he was a decent person, that he might be able to hear about the deepest secret of her soul. And now she knew that she had been wrong.  
  
Wrapped up as she was in roiling clouds of emotion, Chloe didn’t bother calling Safiya about it. She just wanted to curl up into a ball and cry, or maybe smash something with her bare hands, or both. She wandered around the neighborhoods near the edge of campus, swearing profusely under her breath. Eventually she found herself by a street-corner cafe, one that she had been to once or twice before. Early in the afternoon wasn’t the normal time for coffee, but Chloe could use whatever comfort she could find at this point.  
  
Chloe ordered herself some tea and slumped down in an indoor table near the back. The soft music that was playing combined with the excellent flavor of her drink slowly drained the hate and regret from her, leaving her mostly drained and mopey. She would cry about this whole thing, of course. It was perfectly normal to cry when someone turns out to be less reliable than you thought they were.  
  
Chloe lost track of time as she went deep into thought. She didn’t want this one setback to stop her from coming out to everyone. After all… Chloe shifted her shoulders. She could feel the subtle weight on her chest. Only three months in and she was already starting to develop breasts, probably on account of being fat before. The question now was where to start. She considered her professors, or perhaps someone at her study group.  
  
She was taken out of her thoughts by the sound of someone screaming. Then another person. Then running, cars screeching to a halt. What the hell? Chloe looked up from her empty teacup, trying to get a view of what was going on through the glass front of the building. A flash of red light and a thunderous noise slammed into her senses like a bus to the face.


	2. Armageddon

Chapter 2: Armageddon

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, and after a moment the blinding brightness faded away. All the windows had shattered, and people were rushing out of the cafe in a confused mass. Outside was… chaos. Rain was coming down in sheets, the sky was black with awful clouds, and distant thunder rumbled across the horizon. Traffic had jammed to a halt, and the pedestrians were dashing for cover. 

It hadn’t been longer than forty-five minutes since Chloe had entered the cafe, no time at all for a storm to roll into Paris. Hell, Paris didn’t get storms like this, ever. Chloe needed to get back to her dorm, so she wrapped her jacket around herself as best as she could, wishing that she had had the foresight to bring an umbrella. As she slipped out of the front of the cafe, another blast of lightning slammed through the air, barely a block away. Chloe pressed her hands over her ears, too late to block out the sound, and spent a moment reeling. That lightning bolt had been blue, bright blue like the color of the ocean. Lightning bolts were not supposed to be blue.

When she looked up, the shop across the street had… changed. Gone was the brick and wood storefront, replaced with chrome and steel and neon, a cyberpunk caricature of itself. And as she glanced back down… the steel was spreading. Bit by bit, the concrete was being replaced, like shiny metallic moss growing in time-lapse. For a while, Chloe couldn’t do anything but stare. It was impossible, completely impossible, but it was happening right in front of her. One part of her wanted to reach out and touch it to confirm that it was real, while the other part was telling her that if she did, she would start turning into metal too. This was seriously weird. Was this an electromagnetic storm, like the kind that had hit the U.S.? If it was, then it certainly wasn’t like any electromagnetics she had ever seen. 

Meanwhile, the storm was getting worse. It had been barely a minute since Chloe left the cafe and her clothes had already been soaked entirely through, leaving the cotton and denim sticking uncomfortably to her skin. The wind, too, blew and blew until she felt like it was at least fifteen degrees colder than it really was. The further she went, as well, the more she started to notice those little… changes. There were models of cars that looked impossible, entire chunks of street that had turned into steel, and the whole area was so… empty. 

Chloe was fairly familiar with this neighborhood, after having lived near it for seven months, so it shouldn’t have taken too long for her to take a path back home. But the streets stopped making sense. Though the rain let up a bit, Chloe couldn’t tell where she was. The street layout was different from what she knew, and the street names were ones that she was certain she had never seen before. The more that Chloe tried to determine her bearings, the more Chloe became hopelessly lost. Even the map app on her phone was no help, as it seemed to think that she was somewhere a couple miles outside of the city. 

At this point, the residual fear that had been building up inside her overflowed. Nothing made sense. Things didn’t make any sense, things were transforming, the lightning was the wrong color, she couldn’t find her way around in places she had already been. Chloe found a bus stop, a place to get out of the rain, and slumped over. Nothing that was going on made any sense. Perhaps this was some sort of hallucination, maybe even a nightmare. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, banging her fists against her legs. When she was done, she felt calmer, as calm as she could be while sitting under a dripping bus stop in an unfamiliar part of town.

Chloe knew she needed to center herself somehow. So she decided, quickness be damned, she was just going to walk northwards until she hit the university, even if she had to swim or pass through a building to get there. Her one regret was that she didn’t have an umbrella. 

The next few minutes were a bizarre experience, trudging through heavy rain and driving wind, never sure if she was going in the right direction or even if this was real at all. The rain started to let up a bit, not that it mattered considering she was shivering in soaked clothes anyway. Thunder still echoed through the buildings at regular intervals, red and blue lights like police sirens flashing and giving the whole storm an eerie glow. Worse, the air started getting less clear, a thin mist shrouding the area and slowly dialing down the visibility.

“What are you doing out there!” hissed a voice on her left. 

“Wha?” Chloe blurted out. Her head snapped in the direction of the voice.

Someone had stuck their head out through a crack in the door of a nearby clothing store. He had sallow cheeks and a shaved scalp, and either he was leaning over very steeply or he wasn’t too tall. What caught Chloe’s attention was his right eye; the entire socket had been replaced with metal, shiny silver chrome that mimicked the smooth curves of flesh but couldn’t pass for the original. The eye itself was clearly mechanical as well, bright coppery oranges and reds in concentric rings.

“Get in here, quick. It’s not safe out there,” he said.

Chloe faltered, trying not to stare at his eye while processing her options. She looked back over her shoulder at the rain-streaked, ice-cold mist. The man with the metal eye reached out his hand, and she took it. He pulled her in and shut the door behind him.

It was an ordinary clothing store, maybe a bit more expensive than Chloe would go on a college student’s budget. The lights were still on and the inside was heated; the only sign that the place wasn’t just empty was a few clothes sitting on the floor. 

“So uh. What’s your name? And what’s with the eye?” asked Chloe.

“Jérôme. And I don’t really know.” Jérôme touched his eye socket, feeling at the metal. “I didn’t have it before, but I can see things with it that I couldn’t before, and it feels… right?”

“My name is Chloe. Why did you say it wasn’t safe out there?”

Jérôme gestured vaguely at the storm. “Things. Bad things.”

“I suppose so, but I was out there for a while and I’m just fine, so…” there was no response from Jérôme. “Hmmm. Do you think it would be wrong if I stole a new shirt from this place? It’s a big company, I doubt they’ll miss it.”

Jérôme gave a sardonic grin. “The world is fucking ending, nobody’s going to care about a missing shirt. It’s armageddon, take what you fucking want.”

Chloe, trying not to feel guilty, stole a blue t-shirt. She had to search a little while to find one that would fit her… chunky frame, and a little while longer to find a place where she could change without Jérôme seeing. He seemed fairly casual, but the eye thing still unnerved her. _Had he been subjected to whatever was turning the buildings into metal as well? But then, why didn’t the rest of him turn into steel? Argh, none of this makes any sense.  
_

When Chloe returned to the front of the store, she found Jérôme staring out the front window, gazing intently into the mist. “What’re you looking at? Just watching the mist roll by?”

“I can see through the mist. The vision is a little blurry, but this eye… it’s special. If it comes back I’ll be able to see it coming,” he said in a deadpan.

“You, uhhh, never said exactly what ‘it’ is,” said Chloe, pulling a few crumpled euros out of her bag and tossing them on the counter. “I think that might be useful to know.”

Jérôme looked down, mumbling something just loud enough to hear. Whether he was saying a prayer or swearing profusely Chloe could not tell. If he was Quebecois, those would be almost the same thing. He rambled long enough for Chloe to zip her bag shut and lean against one of the mannequins, then went back to looking out the window.

“Get down,” he mumbled. 

“What?” Chloe was sure she hadn’t heard him.

“Get down!”

Chloe was too wound up to question him. She dropped to the ground behind one of the clothing displays, face jammed into the carpet. Her head was too low down to see the window, even if she turned her head that direction, and she didn’t dare try to get a good look at whatever Jérôme had seen. What she did notice was the sound of something walking on the sidewalk. It didn’t sound like shoes, or even bare feet. The closest sound she knew was the sound of a dog walking on concrete, but deeper… heavier. More importantly, it was getting closer.

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut no matter how little it mattered. She wanted to whimper or cry out or do something, but anything she did would just draw its attention. For a moment the footsteps stopped right outside the window. The only sounds that could be heard were the soft rains beating against the glass and the frantic hammering of Chloe’s own heart. 

It started soft, like an irritating musical note. Then it got louder and louder, a shrieking screaming note of absolute pain, the sound of nails or claws scraping long tracks into glass. Slowly the source of the sound continued to move, leaving the same direction that the footsteps had come. Chloe winced as the screeching reached a crescendo, threatening to drill straight through her ears and into her brain. Just when Chloe felt like screaming, the sound began to trail off becoming quieter and quieter before abruptly cutting off, leaving nothing but rain once more. 

Apprehensively, Chloe started sitting up. There were tears running down her face that she hadn’t noticed before. She looked out the window; nothing but rain, growing harder and heavier. “What the hell was that?” said Chloe, stumbling to her feet.

Jérôme was leaning against the front wall of the store, low enough that you might overlook him if you were looking in through the window. “That was the devil.”

And then complete darkness fell over the store. Chloe stumbled over, caught off-guard, crashing into a rack of jackets. She shouted out in pain, realizing her mistake only a moment too late.

A cacophony of noise hit all at once, the high-pitched shattering of glass combined with the rattling of the rain on asphalt. Something slammed against the carpet, something heavy.

“The age of pain is upon us. The lake of fire will consume your mortal souls.” The voice intoning those words sounded like stones grinding together, or a heavy metal album. Jérôme gave off a choking groan, and began heaving for breath. 

“R…run.” he choked out. 

Chloe obeyed as best she could, running towards the back of the store. She remembered there being an exit that way. She crashed into a rack of clothes, nearly knocking it over and smashing her hip. 

A heavy crack sounded out from behind Chloe, followed by a thump. She knew Jérôme was dead. Chloe kept running through the absolute darkness, barely thinking except about where her next step would go, crashing past another rack of clothes and nearly falling over until she ran right into the back door. It wasn’t locked, thankfully, and after a moment fiddling with the handle she found herself back out in the light. The back rooms of the store were cramped and full of more spare clothes, of course.

Chloe rushed through the changing rooms, stockrooms, and offices, checking for the exit. She could hear the footsteps of that… thing coming closer, or maybe it was just her imagination. Eventually she found the right door, threw it open and exposed herself once more to the storm outside. 

The alleyway in front of her was as dark and cramped as any alleyway in Paris, but as Chloe dashed out onto the street she realized with no small amount of shock that she knew where she was again. This street, no longer cloaked in eerie mist, was near the border between the university and the university town and no more than a five minute walk from the Paris-Saclay dorms. There was just the matter of getting there before the… demon-thing caught up to her. 

Lightning flashed overhead, blue and red strobes lighting up the street quickly enough to make Chloe’s head hurt. She was tired, never having been much for athletics, but adrenaline let her run. Down the street, a right turn, then down another block. A few cars streaked past, nearly deluging her with water.

Suddenly, something changed. It was subtle at first, like static electricity running up her spine. Chloe slowed down, looking this way and that for some sign of what fresh hell was upon her. A low, almost subsonic cracking confirmed her fear. The asphalt began to split open, creaking and groaning as chunks the size of public buses tore away from the concrete. They started hovering up into the air, taking telephone poles and bits of sidewalk with them. Even the buildings around the edge distorted and broke as the edifices were dragged up into the air. 

Chloe was about to consider taking a different path when she heard a familiar sound behind her, like the sound of getting zapped by a doorknob repeated a hundred times. Chloe dove out of the way, taking cover behind a trashcan and narrowly avoiding being air-fried by a bolt of lightning from somewhere behind her. 

“Sinner!” screamed the voice like a stone door. 

It was in moments like these, hiding behind a trash can and trying not to hyperventilate, that Chloe liked to ask herself one question. What Would Spider-Man Do?

“I grew up in a religious household, you’re going to have to do better than that!” she shouted. 

The moment the second bolt hit, Chloe bolted. She slipped under a car-sized levitating chunk of asphalt, scrabbling up a mound of broken concrete, and was about to get up onto a nearby slab of sidewalk when the utter darkness fell over her again. 

“You know, for a demon from hell, you really don’t seem to have much better to do than chase one fat kid,” she said, reaching around for something to climb up on to. “Shouldn’t you be giving advice to the Conservative party or putting lead in children’s toys?”

The scratching of claws on concrete was approaching Chloe at a creeping pace. “My mission is complete. Why not visit a bit of suffering upon the mortals?”

“Well that’s— _ugh_ —ominous,” Chloe mumbled to herself in English. _Could the demons speak English? Probably._

She still couldn’t see, but by staying low and feeling for dips, Chloe was able to make her way across the uneven surface. The complete darkness contrasted with the rough and uneven terrain, bobbing weirdly in the antigravity and slick with falling rain. Chloe wondered to herself if the rain was getting lighter, or if it was just her imagination. 

Suddenly, the darkness gave away again, like someone had flipped the light switch on the universe. On instinct, Chloe glanced over her shoulder, seeing an inky black sphere behind her. That explained that, sort of. The bigger problem was what was in front of her. She hadn’t realized it a moment ago, but the chunk of asphalt below her feet had tilted upwards, raising this end high into the air. The nearest solid ground was at least three meters away and a meter or so down, another chunk of asphalt the size of a bus. 

“The mortal boy has trapped himself. All the better for the flaying,” said the thing in the darkness behind Chloe. So much for turning back.

Chloe gazed over the edge of the rock, to the broken ground several meters below. A wave of panic tried to rise up and overtake her, but she shoved it down with all the tenacity of a raging poodle. “I don’t know why I expected any better, but shouldn’t you demons be tormenting me using my sins and flaws, and not just going for the low blows?”

“What does it matter? The suffering that you’ll face will be exquisite, no matter what I say.”

She could almost feel where it was, slinking slowly through the conjured darkness a few meters away. At any instant it could lunge forward, ripping her apart in the same way it had killed Jérôme. On the other side was a vast gulf, with a drop long enough to shatter her legs instantly if she messed it up. 

Chloe started hyperventilating, the fear and panic overrunning her. There was only one thing to do, but the thought of leaping across a gulf that wide was almost as terrifying as the demon. Almost. She only had two steps to pick up speed, but she did it anyway.

Step, step, leap! Before her brain had the time to hold her back, she had thrown herself off of the edge. She reached out, hoping to maybe grab hold on the edge of the rock. For a moment that stretched out into an hour, she was in the air. How she did it, she had no idea. She was too big. She wasn’t strong enough. She couldn’t make it. Why had she even tried? Why. But she made it across anyway.

Pain shot through her leg as it crashed into the concrete. Chloe stumbled, arms windmilling as her momentum nearly carried her to the ground. She took a moment to catch her breath. _How am I still alive after that?_ Looking back, the gulf seemed slightly smaller… and the sphere of darkness was still there as well. A quiet growl emanated from within the darkness. Chloe kept running, lucky for having not twisted her ankle. A few more short hops down and she was back on solid ground, the strange electric feeling dissipating from her skin.

The rain had let up now, though the storm clouds overhead were still thick enough to shadow the sun. There were, to Chloe’s relief, no more antigravity zones or strange labyrinthine folds in space. The neighborhood was still eerie, with the buildings looking unfamiliar and metallic. The people who were still out on the streets were cold, nervous, keeping their faces low under hoods and umbrellas while giving Chloe odd glances as she passed. 

The adrenaline surge that had let her jump over that pit slowly faded as Chloe approached her dorm. The same sense of confusion that had nearly paralyzed her at the bus stop started to return. That thing, that thing that could summon darkness at will, seemed to think it was a demon. Jérôme, poor dead Jérôme, had thought the same. Was it possible that this really was the end times? Was Chloe being punished for her sins by being subjected to a world of demons and endless storms? But then, if this was the Biblical apocalypse, what was going on with Jérôme’s eye, and all the buildings that had transformed into steel and chrome? Then there was another possibility, one espoused by the anxious voice in Chloe’s head. Maybe the sin she was being punished for was not being happy with her God-given body. She wasn’t exactly religious, but the events of the last hour or so was making her reconsider. 

The dorm hall was much less lively than it would usually be on a weekend afternoon. That in and of itself set Chloe at unease. Her dorm was far from the doors, giving her a time to become aware of how utterly quiet the building was. At least, it was quiet until someone jumped out from behind a corner, brandishing a cross in her face.

“Back, demon! The power of Christ compels you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to anyone who can figure out the naming scheme for these chapters ;)


	3. The Fall

Chapter 3: The Fall

“Mitchell? What the hell are you doing?”

Chloe’s friend was still wearing his full fencing gear, a bubble mask with padded white bodysuit, as well as a heavy wool jacket layered over that. The cross he was carrying, currently hanging out of the fist being shoved in Chloe’s face, was a fairly standard cross necklace made out of some silvery metal, though not one that she had seen him wearing before.

Mitchell flipped up the mask, smiling nervously. “Oh, it really is you. I thought you were one of the demons.”

Chloe glanced down. She was soaking wet and covered in goosebumps, but otherwise still had the appearance of an overweight, slightly pimpled, unsettlingly male college student. “Do I look like a demon to you?”

Mitchell awkwardly slipped the cross back into his pocket. “They can… disguise themselves. Look like people, even ones that you know. But if you shove a cross in their faces and start praying, they get kinda warded off.”

“That would have been very useful to know five minutes ago.”

“You’ve seen them too?” Mitchell glared at Chloe, his eyes wide.

“I didn’t really get a good look at it, but I’ve certainly… encountered one.” Chloe winced, the memory of Jérôme’s fate bobbing to the surface.

“You’re lucky,” said Mitchell, turning around. “One of them attacked the student union. It was all teeth and claws and… it was horrifying. Come on, Jules is still in the dorm room.”

Chloe followed him, though she knew where the dorm was. “It’s not just the demons, either, the storm has been turning buildings and people into steel, and making things confused and creating these anti-gravity zones or something…”

“It’s not just turning people into steel, it’s changing them,” said Mitchell, shaking his head. “One of the security guards, I’m pretty sure his gun became a part of him. It was like that Cyberpunk game, his arm just unfolded and there was a gun in it.”

“Yeah. I met this guy, said he could see things with his cyborg eye that he couldn’t see before.”

Mitchell sighed. “Do you think that the blind prophets were right? Maybe this is the end of the world.”

There was a long awkward silence after that, while the two of them made their way to the door marked 1095. Mitchell knocked with the back of his knuckles, saying in French, “It’s me! The phrase is “three peanut butter bagels”.”

The door creaked open, revealing Jules much as he had been when Chloe left a little over an hour earlier. “That’s good to hear.” He clicked a few times, scanning the room. “Is that Casey with you?”

“Yeah it’s him. He had a run-in with the demons, but he made it back,” said Mitchell, gesturing at Chloe.

Chloe really had to get around to coming out to these two at some point. If they were going to be surviving the apocalypse together, they would have to stop misgendering her.

Jules paused for a second, then lunged into a hug. Chloe returned the favor, patting him on the back in a way that would probably maintain a cover of masculinity. Maybe. “I’m so happy to hear that,” he said. “When the storm started I was worried… and when Mitchell came back and started telling me about the demons, I was sure you were gone.”

Chloe told the story of her run-in with what she assumed was a demon, as well as the strange person she met along the way. The fact that all of this was real and had actually happened blew her away. Several times in the middle of the story she would pause, squeezing her eyes shut to confirm that she was definitely not dreaming.

“Holy shit, Casey. You’re lucky to be alive after that,” said Mitchell.

“Yeah, trust me, I’m feeling that more than anyone.” Chloe shook her head, trying not to splatter Jules and Mitchell with the water still dripping from her hair. “Does the news have anything to say about this? Any evacuation zones or something like that?”

“Reception hasn’t been good since the storm hit,” said Mitchell, shrugging. “Just before that though, I saw a report about electromagnetic storms?”

“Yeah, I heard a big one hit the northeastern part of the United States?” said Chloe.

“Yeah, well… there are more. There’s one in Egypt, a huge one that’s covered almost the entirety of India, and even though nobody can see any clouds, something knocked out all of the power in the UK.”

Jules and Chloe froze. The sheer magnitude of what was going on hit the two of them just then. “Holy shit,” muttered Jules. “It really is the end of the world.”

Chloe crossed her arms. “Do we have a plan, then? We can’t just stay here and wait for it to blow over, especially with those things around.”

“Yeah, Jules and I have been talking it over. Jules?”

“My family lives in a small town, roughly halfway between here and Lyon, near Nevers,” Jules explained. “They’re into self-sufficiency, and it’s probably less dangerous down there than it is here.”

“And I have a car, so we can get there in a few hours.”

Chloe’s brow furrowed. “Us and the hundred thousand people who had the same idea.”

“Ugh.” Mitchell rubbed his forehead. “Would you rather we just stay with the demons, then? Because I don’t want to be where the demons are.”

“A lot of people are probably just staying indoors, trying to wait out the storm,” interjected Jules. “If we leave now, we can probably avoid the worst wave of evacuees.”

Chloe paused, staring at her own feet. It made sense, she supposed, trying to get out of the city. And if this if this wasn’t armageddon proper, then she could just head back when it all blew over. The idea still made her apprehensive, though. She had never met Jules’ parents outside of a passing glance during move-in, and had no idea what staying with them would be like. The sound of Jérôme’s dying scream flashed through her mind.

“Alright. It’ll take me a little while to grab my things, but I’m on board,” Chloe said.

By “a little while” she meant about half an hour. She took about half of her clothes, her computer, the all-essential estrogen pill disk thingy, a few pencils and notebooks, and other miscellany. Having filled up a substantial backpack, and noticing the rain was still coming down outside, she remembered to grab an umbrella before jogging out to Mitchell’s parked car.

It wasn’t a particularly _good_ car, of course. It was a small, mildly rusty four-seater that made Chloe worry if it would be able to get started at all. She crammed herself and her backpack into the passenger seat, shut the door behind her, and nodded at Mitchell to get it started. The car rumbled to life and pulled out of the parking structure in near-silence. The storm was still in a lull, lending a grey cast to the city streaking by in the window.

Chloe was by no means the best artist, but needing something to do when she was bored during English class had proven to be a strong motivator. The first twenty minutes of the drive were spent on a pencil drawing of the strange mechanical eye. She knew that the image of the eye had been exaggerated in her memory, the strangeness of a steel and resin replica fused into the flesh of a person’s face growing more strange and uncanny with each recalling.

When the art got boring, it was back to the old recourse of people on road trips: staring out the window. Chloe hadn’t gone far from Paris since she flew out in the fall, not having transportation, and was surprised to see how rural things were just outside of the city boundaries. The two-lane roads barely skirted the edge of thick forests and open fields, with signs of civilization few and far between.

“I didn’t realize France was this… rural,” Chloe mumbled. “Reminds me of home, actually.”

“What?” said Jules, incredulously. “This area is built up like crazy, there’s a huge highway going through and everything. Did Mitchell take us through the backwoods or something?”

“I might not be the best driver, but I’m not that much of a dumbass! This was the most direct route. It’s either this or…” Mitchell shrugged, “off-road I guess.”

“Uhhh, the most direct route is the _highway_.”

“This is the highway!” said Mitchell, voice cracking with friendly anger. “The GPS says the highway is right here, but when I took the turn all there was was a shitty road.”

“Do you think this might have something to do with the storm?” Chloe said under her breath.

“What?”

“What?”

Chloe’s head stayed low and her voice stayed quiet. “You both saw what the storm can do, how it can change things. If it can turn concrete buildings into steel and give a person gun arms, why not make things more rural.”

Mitchell rested his temple on one hand. “That is…”

“Completely insane?” Jules interrupted.

“I was going to go with ‘impossible,’ but that works too.”

“Really?” said Chloe. “We’ve already seen that it can transform people, transform entire streets, but this is too far to believe? I think it’s safe to say that all objective laws of reality have given up and gone home early.”

There was a long silence. “Wow, yeah,” Jules mumbled.

“I would say that one of those things doesn’t really imply the other, but… I don’t think you’re wrong,” rambled Mitchell. “And that scares me more than the demons.”

Chloe realized that she had accidentally opened Pandora’s Jar, and quickly started damage control. “Let’s just get to Jules’s parents’ house, maybe? We can think about all of this later. Hopefully if we’re going in the right direction you’ll still find it.”

“All of the major towns have been in the right place so far. Going by the description you gave me, we’re still heading in the right direction, so it doesn’t seem like it’s moved, I guess.” Mitchell’s eyes stayed focused on the road, but everything he said was accompanied by a not particularly helpful hand gesture, a point or chop through the air that Chloe assumed was meant to make him look like he knew what he was doing.

“Well, at least one of us knows where we’re going,” said Chloe. With no more responses forthcoming from her dormmates, she settled against the car window and quickly fell asleep.

…

“Casey, we’re here.” Mitchell’s voice was soft against the sound of the car idling.

Chloe blinked the sand out of her eyes, peeling herself off of the car door. Grabbing her overstuffed backpack and notebook, she opened the door and stepped out, finding that she was in fact “there”. “There” in this case, was a two-story house in a quiet neighborhood. The house looked old, a mixture of timber and brick in its construction, with whitewashed walls and a grey slate roof.

Mitchell grabbed his things and turned off the car, circling around to look at the house alongside Chloe. Jules meanwhile had rushed off to the front door, heedless of his belongings being left behind, not even needing to echolocate given his familiarity with his own home.

He rapped on the door, and was soon answered by two people, a man and a woman. Both of them were middle-aged, looking to be in their early fifties. Jules’s father was short and stocky, with a black goatee speckled with grey. His mother was tall, almost as tall as her son, with blonde hair in a braid that went down to the back of her neck. The moment the door opened, the three of them hugged close and tight, not letting go for a long time.

As Chloe walked up the pathway to the door, backpack slung over her shoulder, she heard Jules speaking with his parents in rushed and stuttering French. She couldn’t quite keep up with the flow of the conversation, but she definitely heard the words for “worry”, “storm”, and “didn’t know”.

Chloe stopped behind Jules, waving at his parents. They kept talking for a few moments before being suddenly jerked out of their engrossed conversation by the reminder of their guests’ presence.

“Oh, hello,” said Jules’s father. “You would be Mitchell, no?”

Chloe flinched. “No, I’m his other friend, Casey. Nice to meet you, Mr…?”

“Boulanger,” he responded, extending his hand.

Chloe made her introductions to Mr. and Mrs. Boulanger. They were a completely ordinary middle-aged couple, if rather embarrassing to their only son. She started to understand why Jules was so… Jules. Eventually, all five of them went inside as the air began to get colder.

The inside of the house was rather nice, if a bit kitsch. Everything looked like it had been bought at least ten years ago, if not earlier, with a big heavy TV and worn couch cushions with holes in them. If Chloe were to describe the house in one word, it would have been “comfortable”.

The Boulangers showed Chloe to their upstairs, where they kept a guest room for her and Mitchell to stay in. Once they had dropped off all of their things, the Mr. Boulanger called them down to the living room. Mitchell went down first, leaving Chloe alone up in the room. She needed the alone time.

She was going to tell Mitchell tonight. She had known him for a long time, and while he wasn’t the best ally, she had never seen him being outright transphobic. She was going to have to find an opportunity, probably this evening, when it was just the two of them. And then she was going to come out. As transgender. And hope that he wouldn’t freak out and hate her. Planning it out didn’t make the idea sound any less terrifying.

She had been sitting in a darkened guest room for several minutes too many when a voice came up from the first floor. “Casey, you need to see this.”

Chloe got up and shuffled down the stairs, finding Mitchell, Jules, and his parents all clustered together on the couch. There was a news report playing on the TV. “Reports confirm that President Deschamps was pronounced dead on arrival earlier this afternoon, having been another victim of the so-called “demon” attacks across the country.”

Chloe sped up, hurrying down the stairs and nearly jumping onto the couch. This was big news. “This adds to the death toll within the highest levels of government, which also includes the Minister of Justice, the Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of the Economy, as well as many others in lower levels.”

“You would think that the demons were purposefully going after politicians, or something,” Mitchell quipped.

“You joke,” said Chloe, “but I don’t think that’s completely wrong.”

“In other news,” continued the report, “the electromagnetic storms encompassing the Northeastern United States have grown over the past few hours, coming to encompass regions as far south as Virginia, including the American capitol inWashington, D.C. The location of the American president and other executives is unknown at this time. Reports have also begun to emerge of strange phenomena within the storm, including supposed sightings of dinosaurs. We have an eyewitness story of someone who escaped from within the storm cell, which we will be showing to you after these messages.”

Mrs. Boulanger shut off the TV. “I think that’s about enough of that,” she mumbled.

Awkward silence.

“All of the world really is going crazy,” said Jules. “Just like Casey said.”

All eyes turned to Chloe. “I never said the world was going crazy,” she snapped. “I just said that the way we understand the world working… might not be true anymore.”

Mr. Boulanger furrowed his brow, looking first at Chloe, then at Mitchell. “Why don’t you tell us about what happened up in Paris. Jules told us what he heard about, but I get the feeling that you boys might have a better story.”

Chloe shrugged, turning to Mitchell. After a nonverbal back and forth, Mitchell went first.

Mitchell went into the story of what had happened to him at the university center. He told of how a demon had broken in and started causing chaos, forcing him to run out into the storm to escape. It was a harrowing story, even with what she had experienced, and she could hardly imagine what the Boulangers were thinking, having heard it for the first time. The look of horror on their faces gave her an idea.

When he finished, it was on to her. She told the story quickly, not wanting to linger on it for too long. Even still, she had to stop to take a breath more than once when she got to the part about Jérôme’s death. Jules moved to the other side of her and put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t need it, but it helped.

When she finished her story, there was awkward silence. “That is… incredible,” said Mrs. Boulanger. “You got that close to one of those…” she looked around anxiously, “… _demons_ and lived?”

“I’m not the only one,” Chloe responded. “They’re dangerous, but you heard Mitchell, right? I’m not the only one.”

“Still, that was incredibly brave of you,” said Mr. Boulanger, in the way that parents and aunts and uncles will complement you for doing well on a test.

Chloe shrugged. “A lot of people are brave,” she said. “And I was scared out of my mind the whole time. If you were running on as much adrenaline as I was, anyone could have done that.”

Mr. and Mrs. Boulanger gave each other odd looks, while Mitchell shrugged in a “maybe so” kind of way.

Mrs. Boulanger clapped her hands together. “Anyway, my friend Anna just gave me a really good stew recipe that I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to try out. Now that we have guests over, who wants dinner?”

Dinner was really good, of course, if rather quiet. Mitchell remembered to explain the prayer thing that he had heard about in between mouthfuls of beef and gravy. The Boulangers did what all parents do and told embarrassing stories about their son. Chloe was mostly concerned with her food and with trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the world.

Outside, the weather got worse. Rain lashed heavily against the back wall of the house, and occasional bouts of thunder could be heard outside. It was nowhere near as intense as the storm from before, and considering it was April, Chloe hoped that this was just normal weather.

Just as Chloe was getting up to wash the dishes, there was a knock on the front door. Jules went to go answer it. Chloe wasn’t there, but she overheard the conversation clearly.

“Good evening, may I help you?” said Jules.

“May I come in?” said a high-pitched feminine voice. She sounded like she was shivering. “It’s cold out here and I… I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Are you alright?”

“No… The storm flooded my house, I don’t know where my family is… there are things out here.”

Jules hesitated. “Come in, please.”

Jules and the mysterious visitor circled around into the living room. Out of curiosity, Chloe set down her dish and circled around. She got a good look at the new visitor as Jules led her into the living room. She was small and skinny, with long black hair that clung to her scalp and the back of her neck. All of her clothes, a grey jacket, loose jeans, sneakers, all of them were soaking wet from rain. Chloe furrowed her brow at the sorry sight.

“Do you need anything?” asked Jules.

Mitchell and the Boulangers got up as well, rushing over to her aid. “Oh god, are you okay?”

The young woman turned around at the sound of the other voices. Her face was heart-shaped, with big sad brown eyes and a button nose. “I’m mostly okay now that you’ve helped. And no, I don’t think I need much, just being out of the cold is really good. There’s just so much scary stuff out there…”

Chloe shook her head. “Um, we were just getting wrapped up with dinner, and there’s some left. It’s beef stew, still warm.”

The young woman nodded, shuffling over to the dinner table. As she passed by Chloe, she gave a coy Mona Lisa-esque smirk. “Thank you so much for all of this. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

Chloe cleared her throat, stepping back awkwardly. The young woman circled around the dinner table. “Where did you get those shoes?” Chloe asked awkwardly.

“Hmm?” the young woman tilted her head.

“It’s just that they’re making hoof sounds on the floor, and I’ve never seen shoes that made that sound before.”

All at once, the young woman changed. She stood up straight, all of the sadness draining from her face to be replaced with hard callousness. Her eyes glittered a dark red, and she lunged at Chloe, hands outstretched, with inhuman speed.


	4. Corner

Chapter 4: Corner

The fight-or-flight response is a funny thing. Usually we think of it as giving increased speed and reflexes for running away. Not a lot of people remember that the “fight” part can be just as reflexive.

The demon lunged towards Chloe, hands outstretched. Without even thinking, she intercepted its face with her fist. It stopped for a second, growling and clutching its face. Chloe had hurt her fist as well, but her adrenaline-accelerated mind didn’t bother dealing with the injury. She booked it.

Leaping over the couch and crashing past the frozen form of Mr. Boulanger, Chloe made a frantic run for the back door. Suddenly, everything went dark. Too dark.

“I can feel your sins hanging around you like a foul fog, boy. Do not think you can escape the claws of judgement,” hissed the demon, still using the young woman’s voice.

Chloe dropped to the ground, feeling her way on her hands and knees. Frustratedly, she yelled, “Do you demons all have a playbook that you share, or are you just too  _ fucking stupid _ to come up with new insults?”

The demon roared, and a thunderous blast fired off somewhere to Chloe’s right, shattering glass and making her hair stand up. She steered away from it, trying to find an exit, only to run back into the couch.

“Can you even see through your own darkness? That seems like it’d be a major flaw in this whole plan,” mumbled Chloe.

“Shut up and die, human!” another bolt went right over Chloe, filling her nostrils with the scent of charred hair. She climbed back over the couch, and throwing caution to the wind, dashed forward until she could see again. When she reached the edge of the eerie inky sphere that the demon had conjured, for a moment she thought she had outsmarted it, but that illusion was blown away as the young woman stepped out from behind the cloud. 

It was still wearing the same waterlogged outfit, and overall it still looked like the same person, aside from the mottled red-and-yellow eyes and the dark maroon veins all across its exposed skin like tears in the flesh. It carried itself differently as well, hunched over with its arms out like a beast ready to leap at a moment’s notice. It glared at Chloe with horrible rage. 

It was just the two of them. Mr and Mrs. Boulanger were nowhere to be seen, and Mitchell was completely frozen, sitting against the dining room table pale with terror. Chloe glanced at Mitchell, and he glanced back at her, shaking his head in fear. Suddenly, Jules emerged from the darkness, holding a vase over his head. Chloe had just a moment to muse about the fact that magical darkness must not have been much of an impediment for him, before Jules shattered the vase over the demon’s head.

“Get away from my—“ 

The demon muttered a phrase of some strange language that made Chloe’s head hurt, and a blast of off-white lightning launched from her hand. The electricity ran through Jules’s flesh, burning and charring his skin and hair. He seized up, unable to scream, before collapsing backwards.

The demon grimaced, feeling at the bleeding wounds on its head. Chloe, frozen in fear, took the opportunity to run directly away from the thing trying to kill her. Too panicked to think ahead, she dashed up the stairs, winged around the corner, and slammed the door behind her. 

Chloe was alone in the upstairs guest room with hers and Mitchell’s things. An idea hit her; she picked up Mitchell’s backpack and started quickly flipping through its contents. She could apologize for the intrusion of privacy later, but for now she needed the only defense against demons she knew about. Sure enough, in one of the side pockets of the backpack was a small silver cross with a string around the top for hanging it on a necklace. Chloe wrapped the string around her wrist and gripped the cross, then waited.

For a moment she thought that the demon hadn’t noticed her. Then she heard it, the slow methodical steps coming up the stairs. Chloe stepped forward, quickly locking the door, before stepping back with the cross held out in front of her. Maybe if she could hold it off for long enough she would have a chance to escape through the window, she thought.

The footsteps came closer and closer, ending right in front of the door. For a second, there was silence. Then with a resounding crash! an all too familiar arm burst a hole in the door. A second blast, similar yet more distant, echoed down the hallway a second later. The demon’s arm flailed around seemingly at random until it found the doorknob. With a click, the door was unlocked, and Chloe came face-to-face with… herself.

The stubble-coated, acne-speckled face, the squarish overweight body, the awful short hair, it was all her. Chloe shut her eyes, focusing on survival, and held up the cross.

“Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be—“

The demon slapped her hand aside. “A prayer without faith? Worthless.” The voice sounded different from what Chloe expected, though that might have just been the hate that dripped from every word.

“W-why are you me?” Chloe stammered, stepping away from the demon.

The demon sniffed the air exaggeratedly. There was a sound from downstairs, like heavy boots on wood. “I can smell it on you, your hate and frustration. You cannot hide your soul from me, boy.”

“Stop calling me a boy,” Chloe muttered through gritted teeth.

The demon gave her a quizzical look that turned into a sadistic grin. “Oh you poor thing. Cursed to suffer by God. Allow me to put you out of your misery.”

Chloe wasn’t sure if she was crying more from the fear of her inevitable and imminent death or from the emotional barbs the demon had learned to jam into her. “Get the fuck away from me!”

The demon lunged, arms extended again. Chloe leapt to the side out of instinct, landing on the bed. Even then, the outstretched hand of the demon clipped her on the side, sending a shock of pain radiating through her ribs. “You think you’re too good for me, do you? The Church will tear you apart if they find you! At least if I send you on your way you’ll die with your mind intact!”

“The Church? What is this, the fourteenth—“

Chloe was interrupted by a series of loud blasts from just through the doorway. Blood sprayed out of the demon’s chest, dozens of tiny rents opening up in its skin as the shotgun blast hit home. Followed not too long after by the second blast. And then the third one. The demon dropped low, human eyes replaced by fiery red slits, skin flickering weirdly, hands and arms and back warping in ways that made Chloe sick.

“Bastards!” growled the demon.

“We have confirmed contact. Father Malo, do you confirm?” said a voice through the door. It was all crackly and muffled, like a voice over a radio.

He advanced through the door with the shotgun at their shoulder, aiming down the sights all professional-like. A suit of full armor, white molded plastic and high-tech composites, covered their entire body except for the face, which was covered up with a blue-black visor. Chloe got the overall impression that someone had looked at a SWAT officer and decided they didn’t look enough like a walking statue.

The cop advanced with measured steps, keeping his sights locked on the demon. Then it lunged, powering through another shotgun blast and hurling the cop-in-a-can back through the door. Chloe wasn’t even sure if he had seen her the entire time, given that she was cowering on the bed, but she preferred it that way given that he was likely an officer of the law.

She didn’t have more than a moment to ponder that thought before all hell broke loose. The heavy sounds of dozens of gunshots going off just one room over caused Chloe to slam her hands over her ears on pure reflex. Even over the gunfire, she could also hear the sounds of screams and inhuman roars, the sound of lightning flashing and fists striking armor plate. Just as Chloe was starting to regain her confidence and hazard getting off the bed, the demon returned.

This time it was wearing the disguise of the young woman that it had been using before, though it was hunched down and feral. As it backed into the far corner of the room, another figure came into view. He wasn’t armored like the others, nor was he carrying a weapon. What he was wearing were the traditional robes and accoutrements of a Catholic priest. There was a cross in his extended hand, a cross covered with chrome and circuitry. The priest looked to be middle-aged, with a shaved scalp and gaunt cheeks and thin lips that enunciated a droning chant in what Chloe was pretty sure was Latin. The oddest thing about him was in the areas of uncovered skin around his arms and collar, which were fused with plates of metal and ceramic.

“Return to the unhallowed plane from whence you came, demon,” pronounced the priest.

“What are you going to do, give me a sermon?” crowed the demon. “Or are you going to teach me how to install an antivirus, you bucket of bolts.”

The priest scowled. “Your japes have no effect on me, scion of Hell. Return to whence you came before you are smitten by the power of the GodNet.”

Chloe had never been one to pay attention in Sunday school, but this “god net” thing was definitely not something she had heard in sermons back home. Then again, priests in Manitoba didn’t have armor plating fused to their skin, either.

“Go to hell, puppet,” snarled the demon in its cloying feminine voice.

The priest began a low chant in Latin, his hand still outstretched. A warm red energy started concentrating in his palm, growing larger and larger until it suddenly burst into roiling flame.

“Why should I, when the lake of flame is your home, demon?”

The ball of fire burst outwards, filling nearly half the room with swirling masses ofvibrant red flame. Chloe covered her face to ward against the flames, but she felt no heat. After a few moments, the inferno vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, shrinking into a few flickering tongues of flame, and then disappearing altogether. The demon was gone, replaced by a few light scorch marks on the walls.

“Demon eliminated. Are there any more survivors?” said the priest. There wasn’t anyone around to hear him from what Chloe could tell, and his voice suddenly had that same crackly radio-esque quality.

“Ummm, hello,” said Chloe. “I’m a survivor. I think.”

The priest looked at her as if the bed itself had started talking to him. After a moment, his hard expression softened, and when he spoke to Chloe his voice had returned to an organic timber. “Oh, hello. I’m glad to see you’re alive. What’s your name, young man?”

Chloe extended her hand, saying, “Ch— Casey Beech.”

“Good evening, Casey. My name is Father Malo. I’m from the CyberChurch and I’m here to bring you salvation,” said Father Malo.

And that’s approximately the last thing that a teenage trans woman with communist leanings ever wants to hear.

“CyberChurch?”

Father Malo clasped his hands and nodded his head. “The CyberChurch, we who follow the word of God and His holy software, through his messenger on Earth, Pope Jean Malraux.”

Chloe gulped. “That’s wonderful.”

“Indeed it is. Come with me, if you could. The demon may have returned to the lake of fire, but it is still not safe here,” he said, extending his hand.

Chloe, running on autopilot, tried to take his hand but was met by stabbing pain in her side. She winced, grabbing at her bruised ribs.

“Are you hurt, my son?”

Normally Chloe would have taken offense at the second part, but she had bigger concerns. “The demon got a good hit in. It’ll be fine in a few days, I think.”

“No, please. Allow me.” Father Malo extended his hand to touch the injured part. His fingers barely brushed against Chloe’s shirt while he began to mutter in Latin. She froze, not sure what he was doing and too terrified of the hellfire he’d just summoned up to object. A warm light radiated out of his hand, and over the course of a few seconds, the pain faded. When the prayer was done, Father Malo stepped back. Chloe stood up, and with a combination of awe and mild fear she realized that she was completely uninjured.

Father Malo led her downstairs, where the rest of the police team was convalescing. One of them had been killed in the fighting, and Father Malo immediately set out giving him his last rites. Jules, Mitchell, and Jules’s parents were still around as well, all doing fairly well.

“What the…? Jules? I thought the demon—“

Jules weakly waved in Chloe’s direction, leaning against the back wall of the house. “You can thank Father Malo over there. That healing thing he does is very powerful.”

“Yeah, he gave me some of that,” said Chloe, making her way to the bottom of the stairs. “I’m aware.”

Chloe, exhausted from her encounter with the demon, made it to the kitchen before slumping against the counter with a glass of water. She sipped it slowly, staring at Father Malo and his cohort. All of the others were wearing identical suits of armor to the one with the shotgun, who she now realized was the one lying dead at their feet. She felt sorry for the guy, but at the same time… if it dresses like a cop, talks like a cop, and shoots like a cop, they’re probably cops. Cops who were affiliated in some way with this “CyberChurch” thing, going by the fact that they took orders from Father Malo. Chloe was suspicious.

Father Malo completed his prayer and nodded to two of his guards, or whatever they were, who then carried off the fallen corpse back through the broken-open front door. Father Malo, meanwhile, turned aside and started talking to nobody. It was a brief conversation, and although Chloe couldn’t read lips, she could at least tell that he was probably talking to someone based on the pauses.

“Alright, grab your things,” Father Malo suddenly announced. “You’re being evacuated to the city.”

“What?” said Jules.

“What?” said Mr. Boulanger.

“What?” said Mitchell.

“Those are the instructions from the Bishop,” Father Malo said with a nod. “Outlying areas like these are too dangerous for most people, too many demons around. You’re being evacuated to Lyon where you’ll be safe.”

The Boulangers in particular looked uneasy. They had probably been living in this house for decades on end, and being told to abandon it all of a sudden must have been a shock. Jules looked concerned as well, though most likely for his parents’ sake. Mitchell nodded solemnly and began grabbing his possessions at once.

“Why is it safer in the city?” Chloe asked, crossing her arms. “We came from Paris and things were going to hell over there.”

“We can keep you safe down south. The forces of the Church Police, like my companions,” Father Malo gestured briefly at the armor cops, “patrol the sprawls of Lyon day and night for any dark magic. You shall be safe.”

“Are… are you from… from the Vatican?” asked Jules.

“Of course not,” said Father Malo, wrinkling his nose at the mere suggestion. “Our holiness the CyberChurch has no connection to that false prophecy. The true speaker of God is Jean Malraux, who preaches from the Papal Spire in Avignon.”

“Jean who?” Jules looked confused to say the least.

Father Malo held up his hand. “There will be time for more lessons in the days to come, my son. The CyberChurch brings many gifts. The miraculous power of cyberware might even be able to heal your eyes.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Jules, fiddling with his glasses. Father Malo quietly shook his head.

Chloe, for her part, picked up her backpack. She wasn’t going to try resisting half a dozen heavily armed and armored police, not then. Everyone else in the house, either taken in by Father Malo’s persuasiveness or else still shaken by the encounter with the demon, did the same. Over about a quarter of an hour, the Boulangers gathered up what they could, clothes and photographs and medicines, and shoved them into a couple of large duffel bags.

Waiting outside for all of them was a flying car. Or perhaps it was more of a flying tank, with a stout frame and heavy armor plating all around it. Chloe wasn’t entirely sure how it was hovering off the ground, but the lack of wheels (instead replaced by glowing nodules that didn’t seem to do much of anything) suggested that it was designed to hover. The Church Police loaded into the car/tank first, followed by Father Malo. As the Boulangers shuffled into the open side door, Chloe gave one last look back at the house. The forest had not been so close to the house when she entered it.

Lyon was another couple of hours away, hovering down a series of lonely backroads. There were others headed in the same direction, visible through the dark of night and rainy skies as nothing but headlights on the road. After the first ten minutes of strange and untamed forest that by all rights should not have been there, Chloe gave up on looking out the narrow windows of the vehicle. More sketches filled her notebook, scratchy pictures of ceramic greaves and glass-plated helmets.

Sudden light from outside brought her out of her focused state, as the car approached Lyon. Chloe had never been to Lyon, but she had the idea that things had definitely changed there. It was dark and brooding, massive spires of steel and stone like cruel nails penetrating a sky the color of a turned-off monitor. Though the brick and slate had been replaced with cold concrete and massive holographic signs, there was still some of the city’s age in evidence; it seemed as if every other street corner was occupied by some centuries-old gothic church, and even the towering steel high-rises were adorned with gargoyles and vast flying buttresses.

As Father Malo had said, there were plenty of Church Police patrolling the streets, their armor casting warped reflections of the surrounding streetlights as they prowled from alleyway to alleyway, guns at the ready. At least half of the ones that Chloe saw were led by a priest or nun, all dressed similarly to Father Malo. One time she could swear she heard the popping of rapid gunshots in the distance.

Eventually, the APC pulled up to one of the many churches, and one of the Church Police gestured to get out. Chloe did so with a bit of reluctance. She had expected that they’d be dropped off at a converted school auditorium, maybe a tent city in a park. But in hindsight it made sense; where else would the “CyberChurch” bring refugees?

With her backpack slung over her shoulder, Chloe stepped out of the APC and onto the cold street. She hurried inside, following Father Malo’s hand gesture, and pushed through the elaborate wooden doors of the church. Inside she saw, well… other refugees. There were hundreds of them, filling the inside of the church with warm air and hushed talk in several languages. Father Malo met with a few other priests in similar garb to him, and had a short discussion with them. One of the priests then split off and gathered together Chloe’s group.

The priest led them to one far corner of the church, where there was a tiny bit of space between two large families. He handed Mr. and Mrs. Boulanger a pile of blankets, then told Chloe, Mitchell, and Jules to follow. They were brought up to the front of the church, near the larger-than-life crucifix mounted on the wall. There was another small gap in the mass of humanity there, and after a minute the priest was able to borrow and scrounge three mattresses for them as well. After a day as long and as exhausting as this one, Chloe was about ready to pass out.

Just as she started to drift off, however, something odd drew her attention. The immense wooden crucifixion above her was… different. Jesus’s body was interlaced with wires and mechanical components in his arms and legs; and instead of simple wood, he was crucified upon a cross of silicon and circuitry.


	5. Kill Me Every Time

Chapter 5: Kill Me Every Time

The next few days blurred together for Chloe. There just wasn’t much to do, living in a refugee camp in a church. The first day or so she spent lounging around, looking for any news on her phone (there wasn’t much besides status updates on the progress the Church was making in eliminating demons from France) and sketching some of the people around her.

By the second day she was entirely too bored and decided to start going on long walks. The city outside was… new. Though the weather was still terrible, there was something different about the city as compared to when she had first seen it. It looked cleaner, more smooth. There was less dirt, far fewer people wandering around scared and uncertain, less color to the lights. 

What hadn’t changed was the omnipresence of the Church. There were dozens of smaller churches around the center of Lyon, and even outside of that it felt like every second or third building was owned by the Church, operating as a charity or a recruitment center. Even the French police had been all but subsumed by the Church Police, the white-armored figures standing at intersections and checking for subway tickets like it was the most normal thing in the world. Chloe mostly noticed the guns at their hip; that was certainly new. It was a big clunky design, too large to be concealed, big enough that she wasn’t sure how they could use them effectively.

This isn’t to say that the Church wasn’t generous; the more than a hundred refugees staying in the church were treated better than any refugees Chloe had ever heard of. There were meals served by church attendants three times a day, warm oatmeal and hot soup and delicious fried something-or-others, tasting as if it had been made fresh for them. If anyone got sick, and many people did, the priest would come by and do his healing-hands mojo on them. The power of miracles was very real in this new France, and in the first couple of days Chloe saw at least half a dozen people converting to the CyberChurch.

Chloe wasn’t entirely sure what to think about all of this. Her parents had given her more than a passing familiarity with the Roman Catholic church and all of its trappings, though they hadn’t been anywhere near as devout as, say, Mitchell’s. In high school, especially, she had become increasingly aware of the church’s past and present abuses. And then she had realized that she was neither cis nor straight over the course of a few grueling months of therapy and near-suicidal depression in October of last year. The knowledge that the church she had grown up with now considered her an abomination against God had done much to make her sever her ties to her previous faith.

But then the demons had arrived, taunting her about the depths of her sin. And after that, there was Father Malo, professing to not be connected to the Vatican and having actual divine powers. Unless, she supposed, they were faking it somehow. But either way, the Church had real power, power that worked even on a nonbeliever such as herself. And if they had power, that meant that there was some divinity backing them up…

Chloe ended up sitting for at least an hour, letting the noise of the church pass over her like a wave, staring at her feet while she pondered these questions. It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do.  _ Maybe my church was right after all… _ she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. “Maybe I am just an abomination…” she whispered out loud.

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sounds of an argument nearby. Chloe tried to focus on her notebook or on her own thoughts, but as the argument got louder and louder, she couldn’t help but pay attention to it. The two women involved were both speaking another language that Chloe didn’t understand. If she had to guess, she would have said it sounded like Arabic or perhaps Farsi. Chloe glanced up and back down, only to do a double-take when she realized that this was more than just a petty argument between two of her fellow refugees.

They were, at the furthest, seven or eight meters away. One of them was a Church Police officer, clad in white armor but not bearing any visible weaponry. The other was a woman about Chloe’s age. She had her hair in a ponytail held together by a pale blue scrunchy, and she was wearing enough scarves, sweaters, jeans and skirts to cover herself from the neck down.

The argument went on for a little while, rapidly escalating the entire time. Bit by bit, the other refugees around Chloe started looking up to try listening in to the conversation, even if they didn’t understand the words being spoken. Chloe couldn’t get a read on the conversation, though she could tell that the police officer was more annoyed than angry. Chloe looked to either side to see how everyone else was reacting; mostly they seemed to be just as awestruck as her. She also noticed that the woman being interrogated was sharing a space with three other people, roughly similar in age except for a boy who couldn’t have been older than twelve. They had leaned back to the very corner of the white blanket that marked their section of floor, holding onto one another out of subtle fear.

The woman was fed up and turned around. She hadn’t taken more than a step away when the Church Police officer whipped out her hand, a thin metallic rod suddenly appearing in it. With a fluid motion she bashed the riot stick over the back of the young woman’s head, nearly knocking her off her feet. Before she had a chance, the police officer had grabbed her by the wrist and was dragging her off towards the door.

Chloe jumped to her feet at once. Father Malo was standing by, along with another priest whose name she had never learned. They looked disappointed, but neither one moved a muscle to intervene. Chloe started moving, fighting against her own common sense to put one foot in front of the other. She crept forward at first, like any sudden movement would trigger an attack, and only after the first few steps gained enough composure to walk properly.

Chloe had no idea what she was going to do when she got face to face with the police officer. Maybe just yelling, making a scene, asking what she was doing, would be enough to get them to back off. She scanned the area once more; nobody was going to follow in her lead. When her eyes snapped back forwards, for a brief moment she met the eyes of the girl being dragged off. Chloe could read the fear in her eyes, the desperation. The Church police officer had an iron grip around her wrist, and even though she thrashed and struggled, she couldn’t break free. 

A hand landed on Chloe’s shoulder. “Do not interfere, child. What you see now is but the natural order.”

The hand belonged to a CyberChurch priest. His eyes, golden metallic spheres delicately wired into his eye sockets, glared back at her. He wasn’t trying to scare her, or admonish her; he was simply giving some paternalistic advice.

“What is she even being taken away for?” Chloe whispered.

“Those particular soldiers of god are not under my command,” said the old man, a hint of pride leaking into his weathered voice. “I have no doubt that she has sinned. Heresy, most likely; or perhaps it was witchcraft, or a sin of the flesh which I was unable to notice.”

Chloe was too disgusted to say much. She jerked her shoulder out of his grasp and kept moving forwards. She could hear the priest faintly muttering a prayer under his breath. She shouldered past a few other refugees, standing stock still and watching the scene unfold.  _ Maybe that’s the plan, _ she thought to herself,  _ I’ll be the first to act who then inspires the others to act in turn _ .

Then she saw the open double doors of the church, and stopped instantly. There were at least three other Church police waiting outside, possibly more. And these ones had guns, bulky handguns like the ones she had seen on the police back at the Boulanger’s house. They weren’t looking aggressive, or standing at attention, they were just… there. The guns told the whole story.

Chloe backed off, returning to her assigned patch of blankets and mattresses. The girl was pulled out of the church with scarcely a word, and the doors shut behind her. Chloe didn’t know if there was anything to be done, if there was anything she could have done. There probably wasn’t. One thing was clear: the CyberChurch didn’t have anyone’s best interests at heart.

About an hour later, Mitchell and Jules returned. Chloe was half-curled around her notebook, scrawling in art of buttressed walls and angel carvings. 

“Where the hell were you two?” Chloe asked.

“I’ve been here before,” said Jules. “I was just showing Mitchell some of the local landmarks.”

“It’s really incredible what the new Church has done to this city, just amazing. There’s no trash or dirt, all of the homeless are off the streets, the sick are being taken care of… Are you okay?”

The sheer implication that she could possibly be okay after what she’d seen made Chloe’s stomach burn. “Are you fucking kidding me? Of course I’m not okay.”

Mitchell gave Jules a nervous look, then stepped towards Chloe. “I’m sorry. I’m sure whatever it is I can… Did something happen while we were gone, is that it?”

“One of those Church police officers came in here, the ones with the heavy armor, and had a long argument with this girl in Arabic or something. Then they hit her over the head and just dragged her off like it was nothing.”

“What did she do?” asked Mitchell.

“I don’t know!” hissed Chloe. “I doubt she did much of anything. One of the priests thinks she was guilty of ‘heresy’ or ‘witchcraft’ or something ridiculous like that.”

“Don’t joke,” said Jules. “Father Malo told us that all those demons who showed up were summoned by witches like that.”

“And what, you’re just going to believe him?” Chloe said, getting to her feet. “Who the hell even is he?”

“He’s a priest.” said Mitchell. “You know, someone who’s trained his whole life in morality and who knows damn well what he’s talking about?”

Chloe crossed her arms. “Wow, I didn’t realize you still believed that crap. Were all the pedophiles ‘trained their whole lives in morality’ too?”

“Don’t joke about that!” said Mitchell, urgent but hushed. “Especially not in here. You’re going to give the Father the wrong idea about you.”

Chloe gave him an odd look. “What, do you think he’s going to report me? Maybe call the Church Police to club me over the head and send me away?”

“No, that’s not…” Mitchell shook his head. “Look, you saw the demons just as much as I did. That’s real, real-life evil magic shit. I really doubt that it was the Church who brought those things.”

“Well, I don’t think that blaming it on ‘witches’ is much more reasonable,” said Chloe. “Something weird is going on here, we can’t just… sit by and do nothing.”

“Well then, what do you think is going on here?” asked Mitchell.

“I don’t know what to think,” said Chloe, throwing up her hands. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but this Church showed up less than a week ago, and they’re already running around like they own the place. When was the last time you saw an actual police officer and not one of their Church Police thugs?”

Jules had been standing there looking uncertain for most of the conversation so far, until then. He stepped forwards. “Casey, I get this is scary, but… the Church is doing real good out there. There aren’t any more criminals, any more poor, or sick, or—“

“Or blind…” mumbled Chloe. Jules stopped dead in his tracks. She wasn’t sure if he had heard her or not; the look on his face said he had, the lack of response said he hadn’t.

“Look, what we’re trying to say is that the Church is doing a lot of good out there, even though it’s only been just a few days,” said Mitchell. “You’re being really suspicious for no good reason.”

What Chloe wanted to say was “Do you have any idea what this church thinks about people like me?” Or maybe “I’m not going to live a lie just so you can have a utopia.” But that would only raise the question of “What type of person are you exactly?”, “What lie would you be living,” and those were questions that Chloe could not answer. The words were on the tip of her tongue, burning to get out, begging her to just tell Mitchell and Jules and get it over with, damn their reactions. The last few months had been hell on her like that, ever since her therapist a million miles away in Paris-Saclay had helped her come to that revelation. 

“Mitchell, we’ve… We’ve known each other since what, ninth grade?” Chloe said, shrugging. “And now suddenly you trust a Church that isn’t even the same one you’ve spent your whole life with more than you trust the gi— guy who saved your ass in robotics team?”

“I’m sorry, Casey,” Mitchell said in English. “I didn’t mean it like that. But I think you need to take a breath before you burst a gasket or start running around with a molotov cocktail. You wouldn’t make for much of a good rebel.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep teasing me. I only tried vandalizing a cop car the  _ one _ time.” Chloe looked at the other refugees around her, trying to catch a glimpse of the group the girl had been with. “Just… don’t trust everything the Father tells you, or even most of it. Listen to what’s going on, not what they tell you is going on.”

Jules nodded solemnly, while Mitchell gave Chloe a look. It was a look he had given her before, usually when she was explaining some plan to him that had no chance whatsoever of working properly. “I… sure, yeah. I’ll be looking out for… concentration camps or whatever. I’ll be fine.”

“And Jules?”

“I’ll…” he said, head hanging low. He was distracted, that was for sure. “I’ll stay safe too. You’re probably right about not trusting Father Malo.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “I need some time to think…”

With that, she sank back down to the blanket, hugging her legs over her chest. A sudden burst of pain hit her; for a panicked moment she thought something was wrong. Then she noticed the slight softness in her chest where the pain was coming from, and realized it was just her breasts budding. Not that that was any better, just another reminder of how inevitable it was that she was going to have to come out eventually. Another thought hit her.

Chloe dug through the backpack that contained all of her material possessions. Hidden away in a small pocket was the disk of estrogen pills. There were only a dozen left. The Church might make a show of providing free healthcare to the sick, but she knew that they weren’t going to give away hormones to some atheist “boy” just because they asked. Where was she going to get hormones now?

…

Chloe spent the next few days trying to take her mind off of things. There was no point in going outside; the only things out there were more reminders of how thoroughly the new Church had infiltrated itself into everyday life. Chloe instead spent her time among the other refugees in the church itself. There was plenty of movement even in there, as new evacuees from the outlying areas arrived and others were assigned to more permanent housing. 

She spent a while talking with the other people near her, awkward and rambling conversations about things that weren’t important. She drew quite a few portraits, drawing faces as best as she could and tearing out the sheets of paper for others to keep as a souvenir. Once or twice she tried building up the courage to listen in on the priests’ conversations, but nothing came of it.

Before she even knew it, it was Sunday. By Saturday afternoon Chloe had already begun to develop a sense of unease about that all-important day. Whatever kind of sermon they delivered in a cybernetic augmentation of the Catholic Church was not one that she was interested in seeing, but at the same time she started to get the impression that she wouldn’t have a choice.

On Sunday morning, Chloe emerged from the showers set up in the church basement to find the priests rushing around in a hurry, carrying boxes of electronic equipment this way and that. A few of the Church Police had trickled into the building as well, standing around in the shadowed corners of the building and observing the goings-on, handguns displayed proudly on their hips. The other people living in the church with her were also starting to notice the hubbub. The converts to the CyberChurch, who made up about half of the congregation, looked on the activity with awe and curiosity; the rest of them could be better described using words such as “concern” or “apprehension.” Chloe took note that Jules seemed to fall into the latter category.

Mitchell, for his part, vanished for something like half an hour. Chloe’s unease with the situation wasn’t improved by this coincidence, and she started pacing around ten square meters of blanket in silent terror that the “CyberChurch” had started abducting people. As she turned back and forth, eyes flicking around to absorb as much of the building as she could, Chloe began concocting plans. If she grabbed her backpack and left at once, she could probably make it out without anyone noticing; from there, she could probably steal a pipe or a wrench of some kind to use as a weapon. Considering the world was coming to an end and everything was being taken over by evil kidnapping cyber-priests, it would be justified if she broke into a pharmacy to steal estrogen and maybe some…

Mitchell walked calmly out of a back room of the church, wiping dirt off of his hands. Chloe rushed over to him, nearly tripping over a sleeping man in the process.

“Where were you? What’s going on back there?”

Mitchell looked like he hadn’t noticed Chloe approaching, which was a surprise given the awkward stumbling jog she had made to get to him. “Oh, there you are, Casey. Father Malo just asked for a volunteer to help with… I’m not sure what, actually? I think I was helping him set up the church wifi.”

Chloe furrowed her brow. “Why would a place like this need wifi? And why now?”

“I don’t know, Father Malo spent most of the time speaking in Latin. I think he mentioned something called 'the GodNet’?” said Mitchell.

“I’ve heard him mention that before, wow,” said Chloe, blinking her eyes like she’d just been hit by a flash. “It’s so ridiculous I must have blocked it out of my memory. ‘god-dot-net, a one-stop online shop for all your absolution needs’.”

Both of them had a quick chuckle, soon smothered under a blanket of awkwardness. “But yeah, it didn’t look like any electronics I had seen before; there was a lot of chrome and glowing floating things instead of buttons.”

Suddenly, the church bell started ringing. It was eleven o’clock. “Shouldn’t the service be starting soon?” Chloe asked.

“In a few minutes, yeah,” said Mitchell, standing on his tiptoes and squinting towards the door. “I think there’s a few actual pews in the back, want to sit down?”

Chloe agreed, and the two of them made their way back to the benches. Mitchell’s presence wasn’t exactly reassuring in the way that, for instance, Safiya’s would be, but the fact that he was there at least gave Chloe the feeling that she was unlikely to be singled out somehow during the sermon. With his unflappable aura of faith in authority and cisgender straight white male energy, nobody could possibly notice her. 

They sat down next to one another, with an acceptable two-foot gap between them, and waited for the sermon. Sure enough, about five minutes later Father Malo emerged into the front of the room. Following him was the other priest from earlier, as well as two altar servers, each of the others carrying a huge basket of some kind of devices. The baskets went through the church, their contents being handed out to the gathered refugees and parishioners.

Father Malo began speaking before the congregation, his voice deepening as he projected it clear across the high-roofed building. “Sisters and brothers of the flock! His Holiness, Cyberpope Jean Malraux, stands now upon the holy Mount, ready to give out his holy word!”

Chloe tried to lean around the edge of the pew, getting a look at what the assistants with the baskets were handing out. The people up in front appeared to be wearing something on their heads, like a crown.

“Allow the power of the GodNet to flow through you. Allow your souls to ascend, leave your bodies and take one step closer to God!”

One of the other priests was nearly at the pew where Chloe and Mitchell were sitting, handing out strange little metallic nets, each one a lattice dome of thin metal rods with small plates on the inner surface. They looked vaguely like the outputs on an EEG machine except without the machine part attached. In that moment, before she had even been offered one of these metal crowns, Chloe made a choice, an incredibly important choice that saved her life by way of putting it in mortal peril.

Chloe reached forward into the basket, totally unprompted, and grabbed two crowns, placing one on her head and giving the other to Mitchell.

“Now take up these anointed electrodes and give yourself over to the power of the GodNet!” said Father Malo, and collapsed backwards into a chair. 

All of a sudden, Chloe’s sight was obscured by flickering blue-white light. She felt like she was being dragged forwards and upwards at incredible, awe-inspiring speed. When she came to, she was in… the same church, surrounded by the same people. Even though what she could see was the same, she knew that this was not the same place she had been before. 

For one thing, everything was sharper. The clean stone of the church looked even more elegant and beautiful, the sound of the light rain outside was sharp and musical, even the air felt perfectly cool. Father Malo and the other priests were held aloft four or five meters in the air upon glowing angelic wings. Malo flew forwards towards the main door of the church, throwing open the door and beckoning the congregation to follow. Several of the parishioners gazed up at him in awe, standing up and following after his blessed figure. 

Chloe barely noticed Father Malo’s wings. She was too distracted by her shoulder-length hair and the newfound curves on her chest and hips.

  
  
  



	6. The Devil

Chapter 6: The Devil

Chloe was utterly, completely frozen. She didn’t dare to look at herself, didn’t dare to believe that what was right before her eyes could be really happening. Even though she could feel the shift in her weight and the places where her skin creased against itself, she also felt that it had to be a lie. Her hands, too small to be real, slowly shifted, one lying against her thigh while the other made a glacially slow migration to her throat. It was real. Her head snapped to where she expected Mitchell to be, ready to see his horrified reaction at the strange girl that had replaced his best friend.

He wasn’t even looking at her, having already stood up to follow the angel-winged priest. Chloe made an anxious high-pitched whine under her breath, looking around in a panic. She stood up… and nearly fell right back down again, her center of gravity having changed in confusing ways. Chloe took a moment to breathe, shifting from side to side to accommodate the change. With that done, she ran off to follow Mitchell.

The door out of the church was not a door. The moment she touched the handle, Chloe was instantly teleported onto the street outside, without having to actually open it. Said street was familiar, with the buildings in roughly the same place they were in the real world, but once again there was something eerily different. The architecture was more exaggerated, less real, like something out of a cartoon brought to life.

As Chloe stepped over the curb and into the empty street, she nearly fell over, the length of her legs having apparently changed as well. One of the other refugees caught her, and after the two exchanged thanks and apologies and whatnot, she found herself looking toward the south. 

Instead of the typical late-morning sky was… something, like a stepped pyramid made out of soft color, so tall that she had to crane her head up to see the enormous glowing cross at its peak, and yet so far away that it must have been outside of the city. Given that there were no other mountains between Lyon and the alps, she assumed that this must be the holy Mount that Father Malo had spoken of.

Speaking of Father Malo, he was still there, still flying, now with a silver disk floating ethereally above his head. The crowd of refugees and congregants pouring out of the church was growing quickly as more and more people bamfed out of the still-closed doors of the church. Chloe noticed a couple of other people like her, who seemed to be more distracted by their own bodies than by what was going on around them. She was about to approach one of them, a man in his thirties with thin-rimmed glasses and a crooked nose, when a hand landed on her shoulder.

“There you are, I thought I’d lost you!” said Mitchell.

Chloe turned around, wanting to say something but rendered speechless by the fact she was going to have to explain all of this to her best friend.

Mitchell’s hand recoiled. “I’m sorry, I mistook you for someone else, you look kinda similar to him from behind.”

“Mitchell…” said Chloe, just louder than a whisper. “It’s me.”

Mitchell was halfway through turning away from her when he stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at Chloe with one eyebrow raised. Then he glanced down, and as he took in the clothes Chloe was wearing his eyes went wide. She glanced down as well, realizing that she was wearing the exact same thing that she had been wearing before she had put on the crown of electrodes.

“Casey?” said Mitchell, almost shouting. “What the hell happened to you?!”

“Shh! Don’t say it so loud,” Chloe whispered. “I can explain if you just give me a minute.”

“What is there to even explain? You… you got turned into a woman. We need to talk to someone who knows how this whole thing works, they have to know how to fix it, this has to be a bug in the software or a misplaced variable or something.”

“No. No no no no no no no no. You cannot do that.”

“Look down, dumbass, you aren’t you right now,” said Mitchell. He winced at the same time as Chloe, as if even he regretted it. “This isn’t supposed to happen. I know you don’t want to look as anxious as you are, but I really think we should fix this now before it gets any weirder.”

To tell the truth, Chloe was anxious. But she wasn’t anxious about getting the body she had always wanted. She was terrified that the pseudo-Catholic religious police force would find out. And the more that he opened his mouth, the more she became anxious that he wasn’t going to take to the reveal very well either. Just before she let him have it, Mitchell suddenly grabbed her by the shoulder and started pulling her after him.

“Come on, we have to be ready to listen to the speech. We can deal with your little glitch later.”

Chloe followed. She wasn’t ready to have a screaming match with him, not now. Maybe if she remained calm she could get him to understand what she was going through.

As she and Mitchell followed Father Malo’s winged form and the trailing crowd, Chloe’s thoughts went in a different direction. Specifically: why? Chloe wasn’t totally sure what the GodNet was supposed to be, but based on the supernaturally huge mountain off in the distance, the actual flying people, and the EEG-esque crown she had put on, her best guess was that this was some sort of VR world built around neural interfacing. But that didn’t explain how her body here could be different from her body in the real world, assuming it was running on her own nervous system. A quick and covert check confirmed that she could definitely feel the additions to her anatomy (a bit too much in some cases), which raised even further questions for her.

The first option, clearly, was that Mitchell was right and this was a highly fortuitous glitch. A glitch that somehow caused her virtual body to change in dozens of ways, including height, voice, face shape, and (judging by the way she was fitting into her jeans) overall anatomy. She had never taken a look at the code of a fully immersive virtual environment, but she got the strange feeling that there wasn’t a single variable for gender that could get turned on or off by a bug in the code.

Which left the second possibility. Chloe had never really taken the time to imagine what she would look like if she were a woman, outside of idle fantasies of being vastly more attractive than she actually was, but the body that she had was oddly close to something she would want for herself. Which raised the question: did the GodNet somehow know that? Had the interface between her brain and whatever this machine was somehow detected her ideal form and represented it within the system? Chloe tried to remember the most recent science about neurology in trans people, having forgotten that there was basically none. While Chloe tried to remember the name of that one nerve ganglion that was different in trans people than in cis people, she absentmindedly followed the rest of the crowd. She scarcely even noticed when the crowd went to a standstill, until she ran bust-first into Mitchell’s outstretched arm.

“Wha…?” said Mitchell, looking down at his arm. “Oh! Sorry, I forgot you had… um, those things. Anyway, we’re here, I think.”

Chloe suppressed her annoyance at having her breasts called “those things” and started actually paying attention to her surroundings like she was supposed to. The location was one she had been to once or twice on her walks, a large market square complete with a small grassy park and large fountain in the center. It was a gathering place as well, with hundreds of other members of the CyberChurch standing or hovering around. There was a building energy around, an energy of anticipation and hope.

Father Malo began speaking to a few of the parishioners in the front of the crowd, though not loudly enough for Chloe to be able to make out what he was saying. Based on his body language, she guessed that he was trying to explain something, perhaps the mechanics of the GodNet or what exactly they were all doing standing around in the middle of a…

An enormous hologram formed into existence, like a thin mist suddenly condensing into a human form. The hologram was of a human, perfectly represented down to the slightest detail, but magnified to at least thirty feet in height if not more. As for that person… they definitely fit the title of “Cyberpope”. His vestments were old fashioned and blatant, complete with the tall white mitre and long strips of cloth hanging down from his shoulders and belt. Every surface of his robe was lined with red trim, sewn with circuit diagrams and Latin text. Gripped in his hand was a tall staff, covered in electronic components and topped not by a bishop’s crook but by that same cross of circuitry that was everywhere else in the new France.

The other thing that struck Chloe about him was that he wasn’t as old as she had come to expect from someone with the title of “pope”. He looked like someone’s middle-aged uncle, like he should be working as a mechanic, not like someone who should be standing out in front of millions of people delivering a sermon. Then again, Chloe thought, who knows how old he could really be. Both of his hands were made out of shining metal, and there were wires emerging from the back of his head. For all she knew he could have been an entirely mechanical being.

“My name,” he began, “Is Jean Malraux. I have come to you, people of Earth, from my home of Magna Verita, across the boundless Void. I come here in a spirit, not of conquest, but of hope. As the day of demons showed us, your world is in desperate need of a salvation that only I can provide.”

Chloe leaned over and whispered into Mitchell’s ear. “Are you hearing this? It’s setting off more alarm bells than the pyromaniac in the school bathrooms.”

Mitchell gave Chloe a sour look. “Shut up and show some respect, would you?”

“I look upon this world and weep,” the Cyberpope continued, “for the sins of the flesh have had far too long to fester and sink into this world like corrosion sinks into a mainframe. But all is not lost, not with the power of God and his almighty GodNet brought full to bear. It is with happiness and joy, not pride, that I announce that the last demon has been stricken from this land, and a great purging of witches is even now upon us.”

The speech/sermon went on like that, but Chloe’s attention went elsewhere, distracted by a rhythmic clicking sound from behind her. “Mitchell, is that you?” asked Jules, emerging from the crowd.

“Oh, yes!” said Mitchell. “Sorry, I was so busy getting caught up in the speech, I completely forgot that we didn’t know where you were! Isn’t this place incredible?”

Chloe, for her part, tried to shrink back from the conversation as much as possible. Better to be ignored by her friend than to have to answer awkward questions, especially given what she knew about Jules’s opinions towards people like her.

“Yeah, you just left without me you big idiot,” Jules said, smiling.

Mitchell smiled along with him, but not as much. Then he shot a quick glance back at me. “Hey, um, this is going to sound like a weird question but… do you feel any different in here than you did out there?”

“No, not really,” said Jules, hesitantly. “I guess everything feels more clear, like my senses got even better but…  _ I _ don’t feel any different.”

“Okay, that’s good at least. There have been a couple of glitches and…”

“Where’s Casey?” asked Jules.

Silence. Total silence. Chloe tried to give Mitchell a look that suggested not bringing it up, but if he even noticed that look, she couldn’t tell. “That’s what I mean by glitches… He changed when we entered the Net.”

Chloe had had about enough misgendering for one day, and decided to take matters into her own hands. Literally, in this case, as she grabbed Mitchell’s wrist with one hand and Jules’s wrist with the other. “Okay, we need to go somewhere else, right now,” she said.

She dragged the two guys back, until the group was about thirty or forty feet back from the crowd, in a narrow street (not quite small enough to be an alleyway) off the main square. 

“I’m sorry, who the hell are you?” asked Jules.

Before Chloe could answer, Mitchell cut her off. “It’s Casey, that’s what I was going to tell you. Something went wrong when we entered the GodNet and he turned…into a girl.”

“Is that true?”

Chloe took a breath. “Yeah, it’s me. You can still recognize my voice, right?”

Jules pressed his lips together, then slowly nodded. “How did this happen? Some glitch thing in the GodNet? We have to figure a way to turn Casey back, this is—“

“No!” Chloe hissed. “The reason why I dragged you two back here is because there’s something you need to know. I… I like being this way.”

Mitchell and Jules looked at her like she had just announced her intention to marry the building they were standing near. “What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Mitchell. “This isn’t you, you aren’t a -- a girl. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, actually I feel pretty great right now, thanks for asking,” Chloe said, staring daggers into Mitchell’s eyes. “Just because it isn’t what I was before doesn’t mean that this isn’t me. I’m transgender. Call me Chloe.”

Everyone went quiet, and for a moment Chloe could even hear the ongoing rantings of the Cyberpope’s gigantic hologram at the center of the square.

“How long have you… known?” asked Jules.

“About six months,” said Chloe, wrapping her arm around her stomach. “But that doesn’t mean this is a new thing. I’ve always been a woman, mentally, which I think is why the GodNet picked me up as one, if that makes any sense.”

Mitchell rubbed at his temples and turned away to pace.

“So… on the inside… you want to be a woman? And you’re comfortable as what you are right now?” asked Jules, quietly.

“Yes, essentially,” said Chloe, rolling her eyes as hard as she could. “Though I thought you ‘weren’t into that sort of thing’.”

Jules’s jaw quite literally dropped. He ran his fingers through his hair and clicked a few times, more out of habit than out of any actual need. “Merde…”

“I was about to come out to you, did you know that? I trusted you, but I’m happy that I learned that trust was misplaced. Of course, considering all this, I guess it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

Jules took a step back. “I’m sorry… I didn’t realize you were trans, and stuff…”

“Does that even fucking matter? I’m still a freak to you, right? I’m a weird pervert who likes dressing up in women’s clothing and wearing wigs and crap, right?”

Jules crossed his arms. “That obviously is not you… I didn’t realize that was what… I’m sorry. I was wrong. I was very, very wrong.”

“Are you sure?” asked Chloe. “Are you sure you were wrong? Or are you just saying that because you don’t want to think about how much it hurt to hear you say that?”

“Chloe, you’re the first person I’ve ever met who’s… transgender. Before this all I had to go on was  _ Silence of the Lambs _ and whatever my friends told me. You’re more… normal than that.”

“And what if I wasn’t normal, hmmm? What if I was a little bit odd, would I still be a woman to you then?”

Jules sighed. “That’s not what I meant. I know that you have your notebook full of pictures and how you’re going to make a video game about bees and all that stuff. What I meant was… you’re a nice person, a good person, you aren’t a psycho or a selfish jerk or anything.”

Chloe pressed her lips together and was about ready to go into another tirade but… he was trying. He had called her by her real name, and seemed to be a little accepting. Not to mention, he had only had something like five minutes to come to terms with it. Chloe walked forward, slapping Jules on the upper arm. Hopefully it was hard enough to sting. “You absolute asshole. I forgive you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being mad at you, you know.”

“You should be mad, yes. I’m sorry,” said Jules, rubbing at his arm.

Mitchell was still pacing back and forth a few feet away, head in his hands. “So… who’s going to try getting him to understand?” asked Chloe, giving Jules a sideways glance.

“Give him time, I’m sure he’ll come around.” Jules and Chloe stood around, awkwardly. “So… what did change, exactly? Your voice is obviously different, but I’m understanding that your body changed too?”

“Um… yeah. My hair is longer, I think I’m a bit shorter, I have boobs, and basically everything is rounder than before.” Chloe paused, face turning red as she realized what she had just said.

Jules chuckled, adjusting his black glasses. “You certainly sound enthusiastic.”

Chloe was about to deliver a truly inspired retort when Mitchell stopped freaking out and walked back up to her. “I think I know what’s wrong,” he announced.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Chloe said, exasperated. “I just spent about five minutes explaining this to Jules while you were off having your little freakout, but… I’m transgender. I’m… supposed to be like this, in a sense.”

Mitchell looked her up and down the way you’d look at a total stranger. 

“I don’t know why it picked up on this version of me instead of the version in real life, but this is what I’m supposed to be, so I’d really appreciate it if you stopped thinking of this as a glitch or whatever.”

Mitchell continued staring, his eyebrows slowly drawing together. “What are you talking about? I’ve known you since you were fourteen, and now you suddenly try to pretend that  _ this _ is the real you?”

“I know this is going to be hard to adjust to,” said Jules, trying to step between the two of them, “but it’s really for the best if you accept this now instead of—“

“Shut the fuck up,” Mitchell said. There was just enough of a pause for Chloe’s heart to skip a beat before he continued. “You’ve known him for what, a year? Casey, I don’t know what’s happening to you, but this is… delusional.”

Something cracked inside Chloe, something she had never felt before. Normally, when people hurt her feelings, her response was to cry, or run, or calmly suppress tears while explaining how they had hurt her. Not this time. “Delusional? So when I nearly offed myself in November, the pain I was feeling was delusional, huh? And when I started taking estrogen pills a month and a half ago, and for the first time in my life I felt actually happy, was that all delusional too? And now that I have something that actually fits me, and I’ve been barely suppressing the urge to scream with joy, you’re going to claim that this is a glitch?”

Mitchell shook his head, stumbling back. “No, no this can’t be right. Something’s wrong, Casey, I… I know who can help fix this.”

“What?” asked Jules.

And then Mitchell ran. In an instant he had turned tail and was dashing back towards the center of the square. Chloe tried to follow, catch up with him, maybe talk some sense into him, but the unfortunate fact was that the outcome of any race between a member of the fencing team and a computer science major was decided from the start.

“Father Malo!” shouted Mitchell, grinding to a halt at the edge of the crowd. “Father Malo, something’s wrong with my friend, he needs your help!”

Father Malo suddenly turned away from the Cyberpope’s hologram, hovering over to where Mitchell was standing.

Chloe stumbled to a halt, heart pounding in her chest. If she ran now, without hesitation, she had a chance to escape. She was paralyzed, unfiltered terror running through her body like a sharp and acidic venom. 

“What is wrong, my son?” asked Father Malo.

“My friend Casey, when he went into the GodNet he… turned into a woman.”

Father Malo followed Mitchell’s gaze, until his own gold-tinted eyes landed on Chloe. He rapidly glided over to her before she could act, pinning her to the concrete with a single authoritative look. 

Jules arrived at the same time, moving carefully to avoid tripping over anything (even echolocation having its limits). “This isn’t a mistake,” he said, panting. “I was just trying to explain to him that Chloe was supposed to be like—“

“God created Man and Woman, separately, in his image. Would you say that you know better than God?”

Jules stopped in his tracks, pausing to adjust his glasses. “No, of course not. But He would never make a person just to—“

Father Malo ignored what Jules was saying, turning back to Mitchell. “Your friend has become an Invert, I’m afraid. It’s a common error, but rather difficult to fix. He’ll have to come with me so we can deal with him on the Mountain.”

Chloe’s jaw fell open and she nearly fainted on the spot. She mumbled denial in two languages, and tried walking away from Father Malo, only to suddenly run into a solid mass. She turned around and gasped when she saw another priest, this one wearing bluish robes, also with angelic wings. He was standing silently behind her, a look of disdain on his face telling her that he wouldn’t take kindly to any attempts to escape.

“She isn’t going anywhere,” said Jules, putting emphasis on the first word. “You claim to speak for the merciful God, and yet you would drag her off against her will? Piss off.”

The slightest hint of a wry sneer came across Father Malo’s face, only to be quickly suppressed. “The blind leading the blind, how fascinating. Tell me, my son, have you had a chance to avail yourself of the miracles of cyberware? We could fix your eyes, eliminate that weakness of the flesh.”

“No, I’m fine as I am,” Jules mumbled.

“Hmph. Such petulance. I think some… teaching is in order for the both of you.” Father Malo motioned towards one of the blue-robed priests. “Make sure they don’t get away.” In an instant, one of the priests had grabbed Chloe by the wrist in an iron-hard grip, while another did the same to Jules. “Baptiste, open a transfer node. I’ll leave it to your discretion where the heretic goes.”

One of the blue-robed priests, Baptiste presumably, tapped a small metallic bracelet, causing it to emit a bright blue constellation of holograms, which he manipulated with practiced efficiency of his fingers. One of the other priests placed a hand directly on Chloe’s shoulder, grimly locking her in place.

Chloe looked up at Jules, who was remaining stoic in the face of whatever impeding horrors were meant by “teaching”. Chloe was utterly overwhelmed with fear, thoughts of death and torture screaming through her mind in a dizzying array of fearful possibilities. Tears started to pool in the corner of her eyes as she realized that she was doomed. She struggled against the two priests to turn her head and give Mitchell her most desperate look.

Mitchell didn’t look anywhere nearly as sad as he should have. He looked stiff, with his hands completely still at his side and his face locked in a slight frown. He silently mouthed the words “I’m sorry,” then turned and melted back into the crowd.

Jules clicked softly, slowly turning his head towards Chloe. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” he mumbled.

Just then, a small pillar appeared out of nowhere a few feet away from the group. There was a strange shimmering around it, like the color of oil in water except floating in the air. “Thank you,” said Father Malo. “Take the blind one away.”

In an instant, Jules wrenched out of the grasp of the priest behind him, running to Chloe. He placed his hand on her cheek, and leaned forward to kiss her directly on the lips. Her eyes went wide as he pressed as close to her as he could. Then, after what felt like hours, the priest grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him back. Jules hardly struggled as he was led towards the pillar.

“What the—I’m not—“ Chloe stammered, uncertain that the kiss had even happened. Before she could think of what to say, Jules and the priest had reached the pillar, and both vanished in a flash of white light. A moment later, the priests grabbing onto Chloe started moving as well, a man on either side shoving her inexorably towards the strange digital portal.

“No, not there,” said Father Malo, a cold logic tinting his voice. “Send him to Purgatory. Inverts are always the toughest nuts to crack.”

“Of course, Father,” echoed another one of the blue-robed priests. He turned to the pillar and opened up the holographic wrist interface, manipulating a few controls.

Though she was still utterly confused why he had done it, getting her first kiss in the middle of a certain death experience had been enough of a shock to Chloe’s system that her mind had gone totally clear. She took in as much of her surroundings as she could, feeling out exactly where she was being held on to. The adrenaline that had previously served to make her hyperactive and confused now sharpened and clarified. 

One of the first things they teach you in self-defense classes is how to escape someone grabbing you by the wrist. The key is in the geometry of the human hand: while one side of the grip has all four fingers keeping you locked in place, the other side only has the thumb. Another key feature is the fact that the human body has a wide variety of weak points that, in cases of extreme need, can be viciously broken.

Chloe ripped her hand out of the priest’s grasp, then viciously turned and kicked the other priest directly in the knee with a hard back kick. There was a pop as the man buckled over, screaming in pain. Now free, Chloe ran.

She ran directly towards the alleyway she, Jules, and Mitchell had been at before, narrowly avoiding running into another blue-robed priest. She dashed down the length of the alleyway and opened out into another wide street. Thinking quickly, she turned right and dashed down the mostly-empty street. She hazarded a glance behind her, a mistake that she came to regret as she saw a cluster of blue-robed priests, gliding down the street on their angelic wings, brandishing longswords of radiant silvery light.

Chloe ducked into another alleyway, knowing that they’d be after her soon. She took an erratic series of turns, navigating a maze of backstreets in a way that she hoped none of her pursuers would be able to notice which way she had gone. Something that Chloe hadn’t noticed earlier was that the virtual city was eerily quiet compared to the real thing, with no need for cars and drastically less traffic. As Chloe ran through the alleyways, that began to change.

“A HERETIC HAS ESCAPED. SOLDIERS OF GOD, CONVERGE ON SECTOR 239,” rang out a loud and clear voice, sounding somewhat like a young teenager except full of righteous self-certainty. The voice creeped Chloe out. She also started to hear other unusual sounds, people running and muffled yet frantic speech. Slowly, subtly, the pure and proper terrain of the GodNet was being filled with chaos.

By the time Chloe had burst out of the seeming maze of alleyways and re-entered the main street of virtual Lyon she was exhausted. Chloe had never had much more than a bare baseline of physical fitness, and sprinting for minutes on end had worn that down to nothing. She stopped for a second to take a breath and listen; it didn’t seem like there was anyone behind her. 

Looking around, Chloe looked for a building that seemed empty. She found one, the sign over the door reading “Cyberware Clinic”, and once she had confirmed that there were no winged Church members or armored cops around, she quickly opened the door and loading-screened her way inside.

Whereas the street outside looked like a mishmash of Lyon as it had once been with something entirely alien, the inside of the clinic looked like something out of the Star Wars prequels. The walls and floor were all chrome and shiny tile, the empty benches for waiting patients were covered in soft silvery plastic, and the normal informational posters and magazines had been replaced by holographic displays. There was nobody around, neither patients nor nurses, although Chloe wondered what the hell the point of having a cyberware clinic in a purely online space was.

But none of that mattered at the moment. Chloe slumped over onto one of the benches and cradled her head in her hands. She had been found out, betrayed by her best friend, and discovered that one of her other friends possibly had a crush on her. Worse, the Church most likely considered her a criminal and was most likely ready to commit all sorts of human rights abuses on her. She had nowhere to go and nobody left to turn to. She tried formulating a plan, but every possibility that ran through her head was shot down. She was considering stealing someone else’s clothes and coming up with a fake name when her attention was drawn by a subtle flash of light from the back of the room. 

“You’re a tough one to find, Invert,” said a gravelly voice. The voice belonged to another blue-robed priest, wings on his back and sword in hand.

“Come with us and your soul remains intact,” a second priest said, following behind the first. “Fight back and you shall be consigned forever to the lake of flames.” 

Chloe stood up and tried to run, but her legs were weak. A third priest lunged forward, wings spread as he hovered half a foot off the ground. His arm, a baroque construct of shining steel, gripped Chloe by the collar. Two more of the Church’s minions stepped into view, looking disappointed at Chloe. That made five.

The priest holding onto Chloe glared at her with shining yellow eyes, grimacing with disgust at her. “There is no escape, here—“

His head snapped to one side, interrupting him mid-sentence. A light misting of something warm and sticky splattered across Chloe’s face. As the priest’s grasp loosened and he fell limply to the floor, all eyes turned towards what Chloe realized about five seconds too late to have been a gunshot.

The shooter was a woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties, slender and tall, covered from head to toe in red and purple leather. She had on heeled knee-high boots and a hood over her head, as well as pale green shades that obscured her eyes. The outstretched hand that held the gun (an identical one to that used by the Church Police) was made out of pale blue ceramic. She lowered the gun, smirking and flipping a lock of long black hair behind her shoulder. 

“You should get back, my friend. This is going to get bloody.”

  
  
  
  



	7. Enemy

Chapter 7: Enemy

The blue-robed priest in the lead smiled eerily at the new arrival. “Wonderful, a witch has come to protect the little Invert. Two strikes from one stone.”

The witch lowered her gun. “Say that to the last eight jackpriests I left half dead in an alleyway. You people are all the same, incapable of recognizing your betters.”

Chloe took the time to get onto the floor and scrabble backwards until her shoulders bumped into the bench up against the wall. This was about as far back as she could go, so she settled in to think about the situation. Apparently the priests with the blue robes and the swords were called “jackpriests”. It made about as much sense as anything else that had gone on in the last week.

The four jackpriests started spreading out, forming a rough arc in the back half of the clinic waiting room. A couple of them dropped into a combat stance, longsword blades aimed forward, but the apparent leader remained upright. “What, you’re going to take us all alone? I suppose heretics are possessed of a delusional edge by nature of their—“

“Oh shut up. Who ever said I was doing this alone?” said the witch.

Just then, another figure loading-screened in through the doors of the clinic. He was a tall, slimly-built black man with close-cropped hair and nearly-identical shades to the witch. Chloe recoiled as she noticed what he was wearing; a simple black preacher’s robe and a cross around his neck.

“You’re just in time, Damien,” said the witch, not breaking eye contact with the lead jackpriest.

“What can I say,” said Damien, cracking his knuckles. “I’ve always prided myself on punctuality.”

“Heretic!” screamed one of the jackpriests. In an instant, his sword evaporated, replaced by a gout of golden flames that erupted towards Damien like a firehose spout. Damien sidestepped out of the way and began praying loudly in Latin, while the rest of the room erupted into violence.

Two of the jackpriests charged at the witch, swords blazing. She dropped low and they both missed, though a few strands of jet-black hair drifted to the floor as she moved back a meter or two. Phrases in an inhuman tongue spilled from her lips as she stood up. Suddenly the witch stumbled drunkenly, and Chloe was worried she had slipped on the clean clinic floor. Just as soon as the odd slip had started, the witch straightened herself, like she had planned it, and with a clawing gesture a wave of palpable yet invisible  _ wrongness _ splashed out over the two jackpriests. 

Damien and the jackpriest that had just tried to incinerate him slowly circled one another in the back of the clinic, on the opposite side from the corner where Chloe was holed up.

“You have no faith, heretic,” he sneered. “You saw the wonders we have wrought, and still you turn away from us? Your blindness disgusts me.”

“Lord, bless this man with clarity, that he might—“

The jackpriest screamed, a sword flashing into his hands as he rushed forwards. He swung the sword in a powerful downward arc, which Damien didn’t have to move more than a few centimeters to avoid entirely. Damien responded at once, grabbing his opponent by the wrists and twisting until the longsword fell from his grasp and fizzled out of existence.

The two jackpriests that had been hit by the witch’s spell tried to lunge forward with their blades, but at once it became clear that something was different. They were sluggish, awkward, stiff to the point of near-paralysis. Their swords moved in slow-motion, and the witch smiled as she took a single step out of their reach. 

“What’s wrong? Forgot to stretch before the fight, my friends?” The witch pulled her gun out, taking aim at the head of the jackpriest nearest to her. “Or did you just realize why you should never fuck with a witch?”

The leader of the jackpriests had been standing back and observing up until now. Quietly but surely, he moved forward. Another golden flaming longsword instantly appeared in his hand, and as he came up behind the witch he reeled back for a killing blow.

“Behind you!” Chloe shouted. Both Damien and the witch immediately turned around as best as they could.

The witch saw the sword coming just a second before impact, throwing up an arm. The blade slashed right through the sleeve of her jacket, and an arc of finely-misted blood splattered across the tile as the witch stumbled backwards and gasped in pain.

Damien, distracted by Chloe’s shout, looked away from the jackpriest with which he was grappling just long enough for his opponent to escape, delivering a hard punch to his face. Damien’s lip split open and a slow trickle of blood ran down to his collar, and the jackpriest gave him no time to collect himself, kneeing him in the stomach before bearing him to the ground, hands wrapped around his throat. 

Damien grabbed the jackpriest by the arms and tried to throw him off, but with the disadvantage in leverage he didn’t get very far. Damien gritted his teeth, hooking his arm around the jackpriest’s in an awkward grip. Suddenly, the back of his forearm unfolded, revealing it to be a cybernetic construct. A small grey object the size of a cell phone emerged on a small mount. The jackpriest had but a moment to notice it before the tiny gun fired, three pops like the sound of a camera going off, each burst of light boring a hole into the man’s head.

The witch stayed on the defensive, dancing just out of the way of the lead jackpriest’s sword strikes with awkward but effective dodges and sidesteps, keeping just out of his reach while having her focus locked on him. The other two priests moved in as well, occasionally sending out utterly awkward swings as well, like they were trying to fence underwater. Every so often the witch would try to fire a shot, but at such a close range she couldn’t line it up without risking getting run through.

Suddenly one of the “slowed” jackpriests made a clever move, sidestepping to flank the witch from behind, forcing her into an awkward diagonal pose to be able to defend against both at once. The leader took the time to scream a phrase in Latin, sword blazing, and let out a series of lightning-quick slashes. The witch dropped to the ground to avoid them, though a few shallow red lines popped up on her face. The lead jackpriest readied to plunge his blade into her chest as she tried to aim her gun up into his face. He knocked her arm aside with the hot blade of his sword, only for her to fire off a shot anyway, causing the florescent lights in the roof of the clinic to explode into a shower of glass shards and toxic vapors.

The lead jackpriest let out a stream of profanity, covering his eyes. Just as he did so, Damien charged into the fray, having just finished off his opponent. Raising his opened arm, he fired off another salvo of blindingly bright laser shots, each of which blasted into the lead jackpriest’s chest. The distraction gave the witch just the opportunity she needed. She fought to a sitting position, and while the two jackpriests watched their commander seize up and fall to the ground, she took careful aim and blasted a hole through his stomach. 

The bullet smashed right through him and hit the far wall, showering Chloe in sparks and bits of hot metal. She screamed, though the pain was minimal and she could still move. The moment she was done flinching, she glanced up at the bullet hole and noticed a section of some sort of radiator had been knocked loose. She had a moment of odd self-awareness as she wondered why they would need piping on the wall of a virtual building in a virtual world, but that thought subsided when she reached out and wrapped her fingers around the loosened section of pipe.

“There’s two of us and one of you. Give up now and we’ll let you live,” said the witch.

“No, never! I will not give in to the heretics. The GodNet will not fail me!” The jackpriest held his hand to his face, manifesting more of the hellish flames. 

He raised up both arms and was about ready to unleash an utter storm of fire when Chloe charged up behind him, bashing him across the skull with the pipe she had wrenched from the wall. He went down like a sack of bricks and Chloe followed.

“You fucking bastard!” she screamed, slamming the pipe into his face again. She reeled back for the third strike when suddenly the jack priest’s body flickered out of existence.

There was a moment of quiet in the clinic, covered in blood and riddled with bullet and laser holes. 

“I’m going to guess that you’ve lost something to the Church before?” asked Damien.

“You could say that, yeah.” Chloe dropped the pipe. “Is… is he dead?”

The witch shook her head. “Don’t worry, my friend. He is fine for now, though he might have a bad headache. What is your name?”

“Uhh.. Ca— Chloe. Chloe Beech.” Chloe stumbled backwards and, feeling safe for the first time in hours, slumped down on the bench. “Who are you?”

Damien and the witch gave each other an expectant look.

“Father Damien Moniels,” he said, nodding. “You can just call me Damien.”

Damien extended his hand, but regardless of his actions, Chloe was not in the mood to shake hands with a priest.

“My name is Viola,” said Viola. After an awkward pause, she added, “Viola Villiers.”

“Are you alright?” asked Father Damien.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “One of my closest friends just got dragged off by one of these… jackpriest people, and my best friend betrayed me to the Church. Other than that I’m completely fine, thank you.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Viola murmured. She turned to Damien. “I could definitely use some of your mojo, while you’re at it.”

Damien looked at her, puzzled until he glanced down and noticed the bleeding gash in her forearm. “Of course, apologies.” He grabbed her by the hand and began speaking a Latin prayer as he ran his hand down her forearm. The wound closed.

“So you have that weird magic stuff too, huh? Watch out, Father, I might give you cancer. You heard the ‘Invert’ part, I’m the destroyer of human civilization and all that.”

Damien frowned. “I was never a stickler for dogma, outside of the basics. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Chloe shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. Who are you people anyway?”

Viola turned towards the door. “We can explain later, right now we have to—“

“No!” Chloe shouted, jumping to her feet. “I have been here for a week, getting thrown around by demons and Church cronies, and now I have boobs for some reason, so I deserve some answers. You two are the first people I’ve met who actually seem to want to help me, so tell me what is going on!”

“Fine, fine. I’m sorry. I guess you could say we’re… with the resistance?” Viola shrugged. 

“There is little organized resistance as of yet, but we have guns and are willing to fight, so I suppose that is an accurate assessment,” Damien added.

“What was that thing you did?” Chloe asked, pointing at Viola. “Some kind of interference with the GodNet, I’m guessing?”

“I used magic on them. I’m a cyberwitch, magic is what I do.”

“So that’s just a thing now, they just have magic, and the Church can do actual miracles,” Chloe muttered under her breath in English. “This is wonderful.”

Damien gave her an odd look. “Do you have any other questions?”

“Where did the CyberChurch come from? They just sort of… appeared out of nowhere at about the same time the demons did.”

Viola produced a small electronic… thing, sort of like a cross between a cell phone and a remote control. She pressed a few buttons and a large holographic screen appeared in front of her. She grabbed it by the corner and spun it around to face Chloe. 

The screen showed a single still frame of an urban environment, though not one Chloe could identify. More importantly was the giant stone thing jutting out of the ground. At first she thought it was a pillar, but as she looked closer she realized that it was a bridge, an enormous bridge extending up into the sky, twisting in gravity-defying ways as it did so and decorated with elaborate carvings like a renaissance cathedral. Chloe gasped as she looked at the scale of the surrounding buildings, the dozens of ranks of vehicles moving down the bridge, and realized that it must have been at least four hundred meters across, if not wider. 

“What the…”

“What you’re looking at is a picture of Avignon, from the Day of Demons,” said Viola. “That big thing in the middle is a maelstrom bridge, a connection between Earth and… somewhere else. Judging by the speech Mr. RoboPope is giving, it’s called Magna Verita, and regardless of what name it has, it’s where the CyberChurch came from.”

“You’re saying that the Cyberchurch is… an invasion from another dimension?” asked Chloe. This was starting to sound like a bad comic book plot. “Why?”

“Why do any seek conquest?” Damien said, shrugging. “Greed, lust for power, misguided attempts to civilize those they see as lesser? What matters is the harm they cause, not their reasons.”

Chloe started pacing back and forth around the clinic. The whole “invaders from another dimension” thing made too much sense, especially after the events of the last several days had blown away any sense of disbelief. The CyberChurch was similar to the Catholicism she was familiar with, but different, almost like an alternate version. The mention of being based in Avignon made sense as well, as she remembered her history class talking about the Great Schism. The technological advancement could be explained by any one of all sorts of things, and the presence of miracles… she was just going to have to take that on faith.

“So the CyberChurch, which controls the entire world, decides that they haven’t had enough and builds a big-ass bridge to Earth… somehow,” Chloe said. “And it just so happens that on the same day they arrive, the world is suddenly full of demons and weird storms that they can rescue people from and look like heroes?”

“Very astute, my friend,” said Viola, reading from her iPhone. 

“The Church does not have the power to summon or control the demons, besides to banish them,” said Damien. “Only the witches have that power. It is… possible that some of them have cut deals to summon demons on the Church’s behalf, in exchange for survival.”

“And I think that idea is full of shit, which is why I didn’t bring it up,” Viola snapped. “Witches are anathema to the Church. A witch cutting a deal is about as likely as, well… someone like you making that kind of deal.”

“Someone like me?” asked Chloe.

“You know… transgender,” said Viola. “I’m assuming that’s what the jackpriest meant by ‘invert’. Sorry if I made an assumption.”

Chloe briefly considered denying it and remaining in the closet, but she knew there was no point. “Ummmm… yes. Right on the money.”

“It is good that we found you when we did, then,” said Damien, quietly.

“I agree that getting arrested by the church is a bad thing, but the way you say that makes me think there’s more to it than that.”

“I’m assuming that your body does not look like that in the Flesh?” he asked.

“What?”

Viola audibly rolled her eyes. “The Flesh, the real world, the world outside of the GodNet?”

“Oh,” said Chloe. “Then yeah, I looked different before. I freaked out when I first got here, which is how the Church found out about me.”

Damien nodded. “The GodNet is… more than just a computer network, though it operates on a system of code, as Viola could tell you. It is also a parallel realm, not heaven or hell, not purgatory or limbo, paradoxical in the way that matters of the spirit so often are. Your current form, as well as mine, is simultaneously a coded representation of your physical form, as well as a disconnected soul.”

“Wow, you really are a priest,” said Chloe. “I’m having flashbacks to Sunday school just listening to you.”

Damien laughed. “Sorry, old habits die hard. Do you get my meaning, though? What you look like right now is the way your soul sees itself, the way you want to look deep inside.”

“Or it’s the internal map of your body found within a few small ganglia deep inside your brain and then picked up by whatever device is connecting you to the GodNet,” said Viola, looking up from her device. “Take your pick.”

Chloe had a sudden moment of self-awareness, opening and closing her hands, feeling her arms, bouncing up and down on her toes and rubbing her legs together. “I certainly don’t feel like a disconnected soul. I do appreciate the added…” Chloe looked down. “…aspects.”

Damien and Viola gave each other a look of combined sympathy and irritation. “Either way, the way you are right now is dangerous to the Church,” said Damien. “They teach that men and women are created as two immutable categories by God and never the twain shall meet. The idea that someone could be one sex physically and the other sex in truth is… deeply heretical. So they claim it is a glitch, an error, an… inversion.”

“So they would have tried to conversion therapy me?” 

“If by conversion therapy you mean torture, torture, and more torture, then yes,” said Viola.

“The thing is… when you were being brought into the GodNet, you didn’t make the choice to change your body, did you?” asked Damien.

Chloe shook her head. “I had no idea that it was even possible, and even if I did I wouldn’t have asked to be outed like this.”

Damien looked her directly in the eyes. “Exactly. You couldn’t have chosen to not be a woman, physically or mentally. This doesn’t mean that the Church won’t do everything in their power to make you take that choice.”

Chloe’s blood went cold as the implication sank in.

“They will break you. Regardless if it takes weeks or months, your mind will be broken down until there is scarcely any of you left. You will either die, or you will be so broken that they will be able to load you down with cyberware and put you to work in the monasteries, with no hope, no joy, no emotion for the rest of your life. And by that point, you’ll be so far gone that you’ll thank them for it.”

An awkward silence fell over the inside of the clinic as Chloe tried not to think too hard about the scenario Damien had just described. She slowed down her breathing as much as she could, and focused on the fact that the Church did not and would not be able to get her. 

“Holy shit Damien, you didn’t have to scare her like that. She’s even less used to this than we are. “

Damien looked down. “I’m just making sure she understands the gravity of the situation.”

“It’s okay, my friend,” she said, turning to Chloe. “We can keep you safe. The Church isn’t going to be able to get rid of you and everyone like you without a fight.” She turned back to Damien. “Speaking of keeping her safe, we need to get going, and soon.”

Chloe picked up the pipe again, holding it in two hands like a sword. “I have about a million more questions that I need to get answered. But I guess we are a bit short on time. So just one more for the road?”

Viola slipped the GodNet device into a pocket of her leather coat. “I’m certainly not going to stop you,” she said. “I found a good place for a node, I think. Out of sight of the authorities, high sympathetic value, about three blocks away.”

Chloe took a second to gather her thoughts, testing the pipe as if she would have the courage to use it ever again. “When I was still in Paris, there was this huge storm, with weird lightning and gravity went wrong, people started turning all fucked up and robotic, no offense. Where did that come from?”

Viola nodded. “What you encountered, my friend, is what we’re calling a reality storm. And a bad one, from the sound of it. They are… how did you put it, Damien?”

“The physical manifestation of two realities, two ways of existence, doing battle,” said Damien, sounding like he’d made this explanation before. “When the CyberChurch invaded, they did not just bring their people; they brought their reality with them as well.”

“What do you mean by ‘their reality’?” asked Chloe. “Is their point of view making the universe change or something? Are they in the right now because they’re the majority, or something?”

“No, not quite like that. Magna Verita, the world of the CyberChurch, it has different rules from Earth, rules that allow me to heal wounds with a prayer, or for advanced cybernetic limbs to function without lag and with perfect agility. None of these things were possible before but now they just… are.”

“That’s… odd. You don’t normally expect abstract forces to resist change like that,” said Chloe. “I mean, who knew that the universe was a grumpy old man who likes it when things stay the same.”

The corner of Viola’s mouth tilted up very slightly, only to snap back down. “Think of it more like trying to update your computer without restarting it, or jamming two crustal plates together until they inevitably slip and cause an earthquake.”

Chloe’s eyes went wide as she tried to remember how she had felt back in Paris, the steel spreading like moss and gravity itself being upended; reality having a blue-screen was an apt metaphor. 

“Wow. I’m glad I got out of there without my head exploding or something.”

Damien shook his head. “Of course the physics metaphor got to her,” he mumbled. “Alright, let’s get you out of here.”

Viola, Damien, and Chloe hurried out of the cyberware clinic in a tight group, sticking to the edge of the street. The GodNet was still eerily empty, though the echoing voice of the Cyberpope could still be heard echoing between the high buildings. Chloe could also hear other sounds in the distance, indistinct yelling and gunfire. 

“What’s that?” Chloe asked.

“The same thing that happened to you. With so many being brought into the GodNet for the Cyberpope’s address, it’s a free for all out here.”

Chloe didn’t respond because she didn’t know how to respond. She had the sinking feeling that a lot of the other people like her weren’t going to be as lucky as she was.

“Is he still talking?” Chloe said rolling her eyes exaggeratedly. “It’s been like half an hour, Mr. Pope sir, it’s time to shut up and take your medicine,” she added in a faux-British accent.

“If you’re going to talk,” hissed Viola, “at least keep it down. We’re being stealthy.”

“Sorry,” whispered Chloe, barely audible.

“It’s fine, you’ve never done this before,” said Viola. “Just stay low and stay quiet, thank you.”

Chloe nodded, and bent over as she walked behind the other two. The eerie feeling of local silence and emptiness combined with the distant sounds of chaos gave the street an eerie effect, a sense of unreality that brought into contrast the fact that this place was, in fact, unreal. Chloe could almost feel the subtle errors in the physics, the tinting in the light. The GodNet was not reality, and neither was the body she had found herself in.

“Gargoyle, get down!” whispered Damien.

Chloe, on total instinct, immediately leapt to the side of the street, flattening herself against a wall. A second later, when the command hit the logical part of her brain, she took a quick glance around. Damien was on the floor with his jacket over his head, blending into the shadows surprisingly well. Viola couldn’t be seen at all. There was a terminal of some kind to Chloe’s left. She jumped to the side, landing in a slide and biting her tongue to prevent her from whimpering in pain as she scraped against the concrete.

A dark shadow, a form, a flying thing flew between the street lights and Chloe’s hiding spot, so quickly that she could hear it cutting through the air. For a few seconds there was nothing. When a sound did come, Chloe jumped, taking a moment to realize that it was a friendly voice.

“It’s gone,” Viola said. “Let’s keep moving.”

“What the hell was that?” Chloe whispered.

“Gargoyle,” said Damien, already up off the ground. “A cybernetic construct, used by the Church as a scout, usually. We’re very lucky it didn’t see us.”

Chloe didn’t need any more information than that, and she followed the other two as quickly as she could. From the spot where they had crossed paths with the gargoyle, they slipped down another block, turned into a small cul-de-sac, and ended up in front of a set of odd buildings. It took a moment for Chloe to realize why they were so odd, until it hit her that the buildings were a single two-dimensional texture, without light or shadow, warped into the shape of a facade. The only real object around was a single fully-rendered postbox.

“What’s this doing here?” asked Chloe.

“No idea and it doesn’t matter,” said Viola, casually stretching her shoulders. “What matters is that we can turn this thing into an exit node and get you out of here without the Church knowing.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Once we’re out on the other side we can work on getting you somewhere safe, possibly meet up with other resistance fighters—“

“And work on rescuing Jules,” added Chloe.

Viola was briefly confused, then smiled and said, “And work on rescuing Jules, who I’m going to assume is a friend of yours.”

Then Damien interjected. “Chloe… where were you when you jacked in to the GodNet?”

“I was in a church,” said Chloe. “I forget exactly which one, but I’ve been staying in some sort of refugee camp there since the Day of Demons.”

“Shit,” said Viola. “Then your deadhead, your physical body, is still there. Which means that when you get sent back you’ll still be in the middle of the lion’s den.”

“Oh my god. Then… I can’t go back. I can’t go back.” Tears started pooling at the corners of Chloe’s eyes.

“It doesn’t work that way, my friend,” said Viola. “The longer you stay on this side, the better of a chance they have to do a pulse trace on you and track you down. Or worse, they could find your deadhead and put a bullet, leaving you as Angelbait.”

Chloe didn’t want to find out what “Angelbait” was. At the same time, she didn’t want to head back to the other side; not only would she be in danger, but there was also the other thing, the thing she didn’t want to tell Viola and Damien. Chloe had had just a taste of being in a body that she didn’t hate, and she never wanted to go back. And yet… she knew she had to. She had seen what had been done to Jules, and knew that at least in the real world, the bad guys couldn’t teleport you directly to hell/prison. Probably. Times had changed.

“Okay,” said Chloe. “What do I do, though? Once I’m back in the flesh or whatever you call it?”

“We have a hiding place in Lyon, my friend. You can meet us there.” Viola spawned another window out of nowhere and passed it to Chloe. It was a map of the city, with one red dot on it, with an address listed next to it. “Memorize this as best as you can.”

Chloe grabbed the map and started scanning it as quickly as she could, searching for a street name she was familiar with and tracing a path from there.

Damien leaned against the postbox with his organic hand. “The one saving grace is that it will undoubtedly take some time for the Church to connect the Chloe who ran away in the GodNet to the person in the Flesh. You might be able to slip out of that church without even being noticed.”

“That… helps, I guess,” said Chloe.

Damien sighed. “It isn’t going to be easy, I’m sorry. We are entering desperate times, and even those who are not as… blessed as myself or Viola are going to have to search for whatever reserves of strength they have. You must be brave, Chloe.”

“Thanks. That helps… I guess.” If she had to tell the truth, it didn’t help at all. She was still scared for her life. “So how is this going to go?”

“Just put your hand on the postbox while I cast the spell,” said Viola.

Chloe nodded and, for safety’s sake, rested her elbows on the postbox. She was still holding the pipe like a safety blanket. “I’m ready.”

Viola placed one hand on the postbox and started…air-typing with the other. She began mumbling some sort of formula in latin, just loud enough to be heard but not enough to be understood. An electric energy began to build up in the air, racing across Chloe’s skin and filling the air with strange distortions. After about fifteen long seconds, there was a snap in the air like a discharge of static, and blue lightning surged down Viola’s arm. Chloe squeezed her eyes shut moments before she was yanked forward, flying down at impossible speed. 

When she opened her eyes again, she was back in the church, with a metallic crown on her head.   
  
  



	8. Ultranumb

Chapter 8: Ultranumb

For a second Chloe wondered if everything that had happened in the GodNet was just a strange hallucination. After all, she’d been given a body she actually enjoyed, and every time she had felt something like that before it had been nothing but a dream. But no, it was very real. As the cobwebs cleared from her mind and she took the electrode crown off of her head, tossing it against the wall of the church, Chloe prepared for the worst. Looking around, she confirmed that there were no jackpriests or Church Police ready to arrest her. There were none, and in fact everyone in the church appeared to be peacefully asleep.

And seeing as how “everyone in the church” included Mitchell, he was there too. Just seeing him look so goddamn content made her want to bash his head in with the pipe, for what he had done to Jules, what he had done to her. But there was no time for that.

Chloe’s backpack, which contained everything she owned at this point, was sitting right at the end of the pew. She got up and grabbed it, still anxious about being seen or noticed. Considering everyone was still unconscious, “deadheads” as Viola had called them, she was in the clear. With a makeshift club in one hand and her backpack in the other, she pushed her way through the doors. Halfway through, she looked back. Maybe Jules was there, body still safe in the church while his mind was subjected to whatever horrors the Church could cook up. After a painful moment, she moved on. There would be time for heroism later.

Once she was outside, and after she was able to adjust to the seemingly-blinding sunlight, Chloe tried to remember the right way to Viola and Damien’s hiding spot. What made it difficult was the distracting, needling sense of wrongness coming from her body, which was exactly like she had left it. Vanishingly few curves outside of her flabby stomach, short frizzy hair, and after clearing her throat, she could confirm that she was back to her old voice. At least her chest was still sore, giving her a small reminder of what was to come. The shock of being thrown back into her real body subsided quickly, and with a quick centering exercise, she was able to drive it out of her entirely. With that out of the way and an idea of where she was going, she slung her backpack over her shoulder and… noticed that she was carrying a pipe in her right hand.

She jumped back and dropped the pipe on the ground like it was white hot. She knew that she hadn’t been carrying it when she went under… had someone put it in her 

hand while she was in the GodNet? She picked it back up again, remembering that it was the only good weapon she had. It was only then, as she got a closer look at it, that she realized it was identical to the pipe she had picked up at the clinic in the GodNet. The very same GodNet which was a purely virtual space taking the form of a bunch of hexadecimal code in a server room somewhere. And now she was carrying the same pipe as a physical object. In her hand. 

Chloe muttered a half-formed joke under her breath, something about channeling the spirit of Heather Mason. She gave the pipe a couple of good swings, wielding it in two hands like a sword, then headed out on her way. She had the image of the map of the city firmly fixed in her mind, and she absolutely knew where she was going. She was going to get to the other two, and there she would be safe. 

An hour later, Chloe felt no closer to reaching Damien and Viola’s location. She had tried following three different streets, and each time had wound up in completely the wrong part of the city. Chloe could definitely, positively, absolutely remember the arrangement of streets and crossroads in the map she’d been shown. It was just that the city was refusing to cooperate.

Even after all that time, Lyon remained oddly empty. Given how long-winded the Cyberpope apparently was, combined with church attendance being essentially mandatory, it made sense. Chloe did cross a few people in the street as she went; they were of all genders, races, and social classes, and they moved quickly and quietly, not quite stealthy but definitely trying to avoid anything that might be called attention. They also had a tendency to go to the other side of the street whenever they were about to cross paths with her. Whether it was out of fear or suspicion, or because of the large metal pipe she was carrying around, Chloe had no idea. 

After the third failed attempt to find Damien and Viola, Chloe slumped down against the wall of some sort of warehouse and made preparations to never stand up again. It was hopeless; she was lost, Damien and Viola would forget about her, the Church’s forces were just too powerful -- these and even more hopeless thoughts flew through her mind like paper airplanes in a hurricane. Total failure was inevitable, and Chloe might as well curl up and die right where she was. 

“Hey there, are you feeling alright?”

Chloe looked up to see a somewhat odd woman crouching in the sidewalk in front of her. She was a wiry, underfed kind of person with reddish-brown skin and close-cropped hair. Her eyes were a solid metallic silver, with only a tiny obsidian-black pupil the size of a period to indicate where she was looking. All over her face was a network of similarly silvery wires, tracing out the outlines of her nose, her cheekbones, her jaw and forehead. She waved a chromed cybernetic hand in Chloe’s face to grab her attention.

“Not particularly, no,” said Chloe. 

“Well what appears to be the issue?” asked the stranger.

Chloe opened her mouth to respond, but before she could say much of anything, the stranger interrupted her. 

“Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t go asking questions like that without introducing myself first. My name is Laïla, and that’s usually what people call me. You are?”

Chloe looked up at her. “Um. Casey. My name is Casey…”

Laïla frowned at Chloe. “You don’t sound too sure about that.” She paused, then tentatively asked, “I understand if you don’t want to give me your real name. You know what they say about fairies stealing names and all that.”

Chloe looked up at her for a long time, arguing wordlessly about how much she could trust this stranger. She sighed. “Chloe. You can call me Chloe. Why the hell are you stopping for me?”

Laïla leaned backwards, dropping from her crouch to sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. “Because I’m very bored, you don’t look like you’re having the best day, and I’m still a bit… I’ve been itching for someone to talk to.” Laïla scratched at her metallic arm. “Literally itching.”

_ Oh great, more mentally unhinged cyborgs wanting to talk to me. Wasn’t Jérôme enough,  _ thought Chloe. “I’m trying to find some people. But I got lost… three times. They showed me their location on a map but I just can’t find the right street.” She wasn’t sure why she’d just admitted that. Probably because she didn’t have any other ideas.

“I’m guessing you aren’t from here, then?” asked Laïla.

Chloe shook her head. “I’m Canadian, actually. A proud inhabitant of Flin Flon, Manitoba. I was studying at Paris-Saclay until everything went to shit. The Church rescued me from one of those demons and brought me here.”

“The Church, the Church, the Church,” said Laïla with a sneer. “They want you to be as off-balance as possible, confused and alone, and then they get you with the wires in your head and the drugs in your blood and you’re done for. They’re bastards like that.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Chloe said. “Then again I did just decide to tell you my real name, so… I guess you might be able to guess how they treat me. I’m just glad you aren’t one of those people who is buying into the whole Cyberchurch thing.”

“Hmph. Never. Streetbeaters give me a bad feeling in my circuits, make me want to go out and give them a thrashing. I can see through their silly little visors and I know what they’re thinking, and it isn’t good.”

Chloe wasn’t sure where to begin with that statement, so she started with the easiest question. “Streetbeaters?”

“Streetbeaters, mhmm?” Laïla said, quirking her head to one side. When Chloe didn’t respond, she continued, “The big men, the pigs on two legs, with the armor and the visors and the big guns. Church Police is what they want to be called, but everyone I know calls them streetbeaters, because they walk the streets and hand out beatings.”

Chloe nodded. “So what was that about how you can—“

“Come, come, come,” Laïla said, grabbing Chloe by the shoulder. “We want to find your friends, mhmm? We should be going now, before it’s too late and they decide to leave.”

Chloe awkwardly stood up, nearly crashing back down as Laïla pulled her up. Dusting herself off, Chloe decided not to push things. Laïla was probably just speaking metaphorically about her cybernetic eyes. So she began describing what she remembered of the map in a rambling sort of way similar to how one might describe a dream they had yesterday. 

Laïla nodded along with the description, and once Chloe had run out of details she remembered, Laïla nodded and started walking off in what Chloe was sure was the wrong direction. She followed anyway. Laïla moved with purpose, cutting through back alleyways and side streets with wild abandon, all while looking straight ahead as if she were following a direct pathway through a corn field.

A few times, Chloe tried to strike up a conversation, but Laïla didn’t seem interested. So they walked in silence. At some point along the way, something changed about the city, something subtle. People became more and more common walking around, and the sense of nervousness that pervaded the air like a stretched wire… relaxed. Service was out, and the parishioners were free once again to walk the streets and breathe in the warm afternoon air. Of course, that meant that the priests and streetbeaters were out in greater force as well.

Laïla responded in a way that Chloe began to realize was characteristic of her: chaotically. She weaved in and out of the major streets, sometimes doubling back on her own path or going through some narrow side-street at a jogging pace. Chloe could only barely keep up with her, and there were a couple of times where she thought Laïla had left her behind in a crowd. She was just barely able to keep up.

The first time Laïla stopped was in a small courtyard off the main boulevard, ringed by small businesses. She had turned off the street abruptly, giving the place one look before leaning her back against the far wall.

“This isn’t it,” said Chloe. “I thought you said you knew what place I was talking about!”

“Just taking a break, mhmm? Plus we don’t want to be out in the street when—“ Laïla interrupted herself, casually pointing an index finger towards the outlet of the little courtyard. 

Just then, a buzzing roar became audible from somewhere down the street. Chloe turned just in time to see an enormous hover-APC coasting down the street, half a dozen streetbeaters leaning out of the windows. After a moment of hesitation, she leapt out of the way, trying to hide herself pressed against the wall of the courtyard. A few seconds passed, but the APC didn’t slow down, and before long the deafening hum of its hover-nodes faded off into the distance.

“Thanks for the warning, I guess,” said Chloe. “Are we at least close to the meeting point?”

Laïla glared at Chloe like she’d just given her a terrible insult, and for a second Chloe was worried that she’d attack her. “The people you’re trying to meet, who are they? How did you meet them, mhmm? I’m curious.”

Chloe blinked at her. “Why do you want to know that? It doesn’t really matter.”

“You want to get to this meeting place very badly. And you have nothing, and you’re wanted by the streetbeaters. That tells me something, that something is unusual about your situation, mhmm.”

Chloe pressed her lips together, not wanting to talk about the events of… that morning. The fact that it had only been a couple of hours blew her away. “Is it really necessary?”

Laïla folded her arms, still glaring at Chloe. “I’m very curious and I don’t like walking into places where I don’t necessarily know who or what or when or why is going to be meeting me. You can cut out anything that’s too personal if you want to.”

“Alright, fine. Let me tell you.”

Chloe recounted the story of the day’s events. She cut out the parts about Jules and Mitchell, but seeing as how she had already told Laïla her name, she left in the part about being trans. When Chloe started describing the entrance of Viola and Father Damien, Laïla started smiling, a wide grin of genuine joy.

When Chloe finished, Laïla nodded. “You met some Storm Knights. The real deal, the cream of the crop, the first line of defense and you just happened to meet them, mhmm! I’ve never met a Storm Knight before and I really wish I could, I hear they’re nice people, but that can’t be right, can it.”

“Storm Knights? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Chloe was starting to seriously regret going with her.

“Storm Knights, mhmm. Haven’t heard of them?” Laïla said, as if whatever she was talking about was a common topic in elementary school.

Chloe shook her head.

“They’re miracles, warriors who fight for Earth’s future,” said Laïla, unfolding her arms and starting to walk back out towards the street. “They can make things work where they don’t work, get blasted by a, a hail of machine gun fire and still survive, slay demons and the Church’s strongest warriors and dinosaurs and vampires and dragons alike! They’re our saviors, our heroes, our one and only hope. Honestly Chloe, you should have heard of them by now, it’s a true dereliction of your civic duty as a citizen of this fucked-up dystopian nightmare state.”

Chloe looked around for escape routes, just in case. This Storm Knight stuff sounded completely absurd, probably a fairy tale Laïla had been told, or something she had made up by herself. If nothing else, even if “Storm Knights” were real, Damien and Viola didn’t fit the description one bit. They were… people, not incredible heroes.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve told me about them,” said Chloe. “Now when I’m in danger, I can wait for a Storm Knight to show up and save me.”

“You never know, mhmm,” Laïla said. “I wonder where Storm Knights come from? Maybe they just appear when they’re needed and vanish into the ether when their work is done? That seems most likely, it’s like quantum foam but with heroes.”

Chloe rolled her eyes where she thought Laïla couldn’t see her. “That’s not what quantum foam is. I guess stranger things are happening right about now. And hey, you can always hope.”

“You can always hope, mhmm. Now let’s keep going so we can meet your Storm Knight friends and perhaps they can tell us all about how they emerged from nothing to save you, mhmm.”

The next few minutes passed in silence, as Laïla stopped with the confusing meanderings and instead moved with laser-precision. Eventually they arrived at a small structure, what looked to be an old and abandoned garage. The transformation that had changed most of the city into a technological parody of itself seemed not to have reached here. The main entrance was sealed and locked; even when Laïla gave it a good yank with her cybernetic arm, it didn’t budge.

“There’s probably a back entrance,” she said. “If they don’t dance well with the Church, they’d want you to have to go around the back before you see the welcome mat and the automatic turret gun.”

She motioned for Chloe to follow her as she dropped into a half-crouch and crept around the corner of the building. Almost at once her stealth became very justified. Slouched against the brick wall of the neighboring building, just out of sight of the street, was a streetbeater. There was a narrow hole burned into the chest plate of his armor, right above the collarbone, with a rivulet of dried blood trailing down the front.

“Well, that isn’t good,” said Chloe. “I’m guessing it would be too much of a leap to assume that he just found out all his stocks had crashed?”

Laïla pulled a knife from somewhere. Chloe wasn’t quite sure where she’d been keeping it. “The streetbeaters have either found your friends, or you were set up from the beginning, mhmm. I guess they weren’t Storm Knights after all… unless this is an elaborate trap to put the streetbeaters off their guard so they can be ambushed in turn. Not sure which one is more likely.”

Chloe held up the pipe, giving it a few test swings with both hands. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she mumbled. 

Laïla gave her a nod. “I like the pipe. Very Heather Mason of you.”

Chloe half wanted to laugh and half wanted to scream. She did neither, and stayed behind Laïla as the two of them made their way down the alley. Laïla had dropped into a combat stance, the sort of thing you’d expect from a knife-fighter or a soldier, with the knife held up ready to slash or parry.

They circled around the back of the building. There was a small parking lot back there, or maybe someone had decided they really liked concrete decorated with graffiti and old dry garbage. No signs of life were visible aside from a pile of ratty blankets that might have once been home to a person like Laïla. As for the garage itself, the door was hanging open, supported by only a single intact hinge.

Laïla was the first to go in, opening the door slowly enough that she made no sound, then slipping inside. For a long moment, Chloe was alone. There was a weird dissociation, like Laïla had never existed in the first place. Chloe clutched the pipe, raising it out of sheer paranoia.

“There’s nobody in here,” said Laïla.

“What?!” shouted Chloe. She ran inside.

Most of the inside of the garage looked untouched, with the engine of a car still open and partially disassembled; likely whatever work was being done here had stopped when the storms hit. Chloe’s eyes quickly scanned past all of that and landed on the three dead streetbeaters in the corner.

They looked like they’d died violently, riddled with bullets or laser-holes in the gaps in their armor. The burn marks where shots had glanced off showed why they wore the armor in the first place. The corner where they’d died was the only part of the building that looked like it had been touched in the last week. 

Damien and Viola, it seemed, had set up a place to hide from the Church, for all the good it did them. They had two mattresses, dirty and dust-covered, sitting against the wall amongst a small pile of blankets. Most of their belongings were scattered out across a long table, with various small tools and bits of electronic equipment, even a couple of maps of the city. One of the dead streetbeaters, his helmet bashed in by a blunt object, lay face-down on the table. In the far corner, on the opposite side of the door from the majority Damien and Viola’s camp, was a small shrine, built up out of metal scraps and a small painting of the Virgin Mary.

“No no no no no! What happened?” asked Chloe, rushing into the center of the room.

“Your Storm Knight friends aren’t here,” Laïla said. “Either that or they’ve finally learned to concentrate so deeply that they become completely invisible, which honestly is something that they should have learned earlier if they want to make it around here, mhmm. I’m afraid they aren’t going to be able to make it to your little meetup.”

“I noticed that they aren’t here, idiot! What happened to them? Why aren’t they here?” Tears were starting to form at the corners of Chloe’s eyes. 

“Hmph. I see two possibilities,” said Laïla, folding her arms. “One possibility is that the Church found them, took them down, and now they are being tortured and interrogated in one of their pretty little rooms of happiness and glee.”

“Considering what I’ve seen them do, that strikes me as unlikely,” said Chloe.

“The other possibility is that they were found, took out the squad, and had to flee before reinforcements came, mhmm.”

“And either way…” said Chloe, “we won’t stand a chance of finding them.”

Her will finally gave out and she collapsed, sitting cross-legged on the floor and leaning up against the wall. As the realization set in, Chloe tossed her backpack aside, curled her legs to her chest, and started to think.

The same thoughts as usual flooded into her. Thoughts of hopelessness and despair washed over her like storm-driven waves on a rocky beach, circling again and again to the same conclusion: she was doomed. The voice in her head, snide and quick to the point, recited the facts: she was less than a week from running out of estrogen; she had no money or food or other supplies; her only friends had been driven away by the power of the Church and were never going to bother going back for her; she was too fat and too ugly and too stupid to survive.

These were old thoughts, and far too familiar, but Chloe was helpless to resist them because they were all completely true. The barrage of hopelessness, of suffering and pain, of harsh knowledge, came again and again and again, repeating itself until Chloe was curled up tightly and sobbing with abandon. She knew that she was a failure. She knew that she was useless. She knew that she was never going to be a real woman.

“Crying isn’t worth it,” said Laïla. “You’re wasting water, and like the philosophers say, a penny wasted is water saved, mhmm. That might not be right… Either way, we don’t have anything to drink.”

Chloe relaxed her arms and slowly raised her head. Laïla was sitting down next to her, more casually, with one knee up and an arm draped over it. Wiping the tears off of her cheeks, she said, “You know you can go now. We made it to the right place… it’s not your fault. Just go.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Laïla said, shaking her head. “Especially considering I have no place else to go. Considering you’re only barely cut out for this kind of thing, though you do wield that pipe like a professional, I think the best thing for someone like me to do to someone like you would be to help you to survive.”

“What the hell could I possibly do? I don’t have anything and I don’t know any skills, and the Church police are everywhere!”

“Then I can teach you.” said Laïla. “There’s a skill to living on your own, a skill to avoiding all of the streetbeaters and the angry shopkeepers and the old ladies always watching watching watching watching! I can take you under my wing and teach you everything there is to know about the wonderful world of homelessness.”

“How are we going to get food?” asked Chloe.

“Have you ever heard of shoplifting? I’ve been doing this for a long time, and unless I’ve missed something I haven’t starved to death.”

Chloe sighed, casting her gaze back down to the cold concrete floor.

“Alright. I’ll go with you. It’s better than going back to the Church.”

“Quite literally anything would be better than going back to the Church,” Laïla muttered. “Spending fifteen years of your life training mice, mice that you raised from birth and trained using methods of your own devising, to wake you each and every morning by biting you on the eyelids with as much force as their tiny mouse bodies can muster would be better than going back to the Church.”

“Yeah, probably,” said Chloe. She almost laughed at it. Almost. Then, getting to her feet, she stumbled over to the main table. “Maybe there’s something valuable they left behind. At least they’d be able to do that for me.”

Sifting through the detritus, she didn’t find much of value. There were small gadgets, of course, and unopened snacks that went right into the pockets of her backpack, but nothing substantial. At least not until she noticed a pair of dark sunglasses sitting at one end of the table.

At first Chloe thought the glasses were just another cyberpunk fashion accessory, very Trinity. Then she noticed the little paper tag on the side, hastily attached with tape. Out of curiosity, she picked it up and read it. “For the destroyer of civilization,” it said in tiny, bunched-up script.

For a second Chloe was confused by the tag… until she remembered her quip to Damien in the GodNet clinic. “The destroyer of civilization” was Chloe, and the fact that only Damien and Viola had been present there meant that those glasses were for her.

“Hold on… they left something for me,” said Chloe, stuttering. 

“That’s good, mhmm!” said Laïla. “What did they leave you? Gold, a puppy, a gun, a bunch of guns?”

“It’s these glasses,” Chloe said, peeling off the tag. “I swear, if these are They Live glasses and you turn out to be a freaky alien I’m going to kill you with my pipe.”

“Good luck with that,” said Laïla, checking her fingernails while leaning against the wall.

Chloe slipped the sunglasses on. They weren’t particularly good at blocking out sunlight, for what it was worth. Laïla still looked like Laïla. The sunglasses felt nice, at least, and they did a good enough job of making Chloe look even slightly cool or interesting. Chloe did one last scan of the table, then looked around the garage. She was about ready to head off with Laïla to an uncertain future when she noticed one thing was off.

“Laïla… does that car have its engine in still?” she asked.

Laïla looked up. “Yeah. Why do you ask?”

Chloe walked right over to the car and placed her hand on its engine block. Or rather, she would have placed her hand on the engine block if her hand hadn’t proceeded to pass right  _ through _ the engine block. “Interesting. Because with these glasses on the hood of the car looks empty.”

Laïla gave Chloe a confused look; then her eyes flicked down and she ran over to the car. “What’s going on here? This isn’t one of those enchanted items I keep hearing about, is it?”

Chloe lowered the sunglasses off of her eyes for a second, then put them back on. She could see the engine normally, but not with the glasses on. “No… I don’t think the engine block is real. The glasses just reveal that they aren’t.”

Laïla stuck her hand into the hood, and sure enough her hand passed right through. “I see…” she said. “It’s a hologram!”

Chloe nodded. “Yeah. I think I can see a little machine in there that’s projecting it too. It’s so much smaller than I would have thought.”

“The Church loves using them, makes the things by the thousands, mhmm. You know, if you sing to the holo-emitters, I hear they’ll sing back.”

“They sing?” asked Chloe, leaning over into the empty hood to grab the holo-emitter.

“Yes,” Laïla said, “Only in Latin chants, though. Very annoying.”

Chloe snatched the holo-emitter, causing it to shut off. While she had her head stuck into the truck, she noticed something written into the metal side of the hood, seemingly with a pencil. 

“Chloe, find us at the Saint-Martin abbey, to the west.”

“Shit…” said Chloe.

Laïla tilted her head and glanced up at Chloe. “Hein?”

“They hid a message in here, under the hologram,” Chloe said, slipping the holo-emitter into her backpack. “We should go to Saint-Martin abbey to meet them.”

“See? I told you they would come through. They’re Storm Knights, they’d never fail an ally in need.”

“Why would they have us meet at an abbey?” said Chloe. “That seems like a good way to get yourself caught.”

Laïla started walking towards the door. “You said one of them was a cyberpriest, right? My guess is he’s had too much violence for one day and needs to seek some absolution, mhmm.”

“I really don’t think that he’d—“

“With the power and prevalence of the Church, it seems fairly likely that Church institutions like an abbey would be prominent and easy to find. A perfect place for a meetup, no?”

Chloe was about ready to object to another one of Laïla’s insane ramblings, only to be caught off-guard by a suddenly reasonable supposition. Chloe followed Laïla as they left the garage, and started thinking, wondering about the strange woman she had met. Clearly there was something more to her than just a mentally-addled homeless woman; the occasional glimmers of tactical thinking proved that. Then again, nobody was  _ just _ a mentally-addled homeless person. She must have had some kind of story as to how she got there. Chloe didn’t want to be nosy, so she just followed in silence.

In less than an hour, the gothic skyline of Lyon had faded away into the distance, and good riddance; with all that had happened in that city, Chloe was glad to leave it behind, and would be even more glad if she never set foot within Lyon again. For a bit the city segued into scattered suburbs, but with disturbing abruptness, even that faded away into empty wilderness. 

Chloe wasn’t particularly used to walking for this long, and she was starting to get tired. Still, sixteen kilometers at a steady walking pace wasn’t too far even for her. With the promise of some small safety with Viola and Damien, Chloe was able to push through the discomfort of an empty stomach and slightly sore feet. 

Laïla’s point about Church structures being made easy to find was right on the money. About two hours after leaving the garage, they stumbled across a sign pointing to the Saint-Martin abbey. Though evening turned to twilight and the woods around seemed to close ranks and squeeze in on the path, they kept moving. 

Saint-Martin abbey emerged from the tree line like a great bull elephant bursting out of the jungle. The abbey was constructed from clean white stone in rounded shapes, with an enormous brassy cross emerging from the peak of the highest dome. The clearing around the abbey was empty and lit only by dull yellow light emerging from some of the lower windows of the main building. Even with the little light, Chloe was more than able to recognize the two silhouetted figures waiting right by where the main road entered the compound.

“Damien? Viola?” half-whispered Chloe.

Viola turned to her, shades sending out a slight glint of reflected light as she did so. “I knew you’d make your way here soon enough. Come, my friend; we have plans to make.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
